


Scratched and Gouged and Splintered

by transcryptidone



Series: The Nursery at the Top of the House [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bottom Hannibal Lecter, Cannibalism, Dark Abigail Hobbs, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Degradation, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Episode: s02e13 Mizumono, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Impregnation, M/M, Multi, Objectification, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Post-Season/Series 01 AU, Power Dynamics, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Kink, Season 2 AU, Threats of Violence, Top Will Graham, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:01:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transcryptidone/pseuds/transcryptidone
Summary: Although the encephalitis is long since gone, he can hardly believe his eyes. To see her standing there, neck bare and tears in her eyes, she is more alive than Will ever dared to dream. He never thought to hope he might see her again outside the confines of his mind.The touch of her hand convinces him of this surreal reality. He has remembered this touch every day since he believed her to be dead, but his imaginations could never recreate it. But here she is now taking his hand in hers and placing against the rounded curve of her belly. She blinks away her tears and her eyes shine with joy as little feet or fists knock against her skin and the palm of his hand.(AU of Season 2, in which Abigail is not only very much alive, butfuller of lifethan when Will last remembers seeing her.)
Relationships: Abigail Hobbs/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Abigail Hobbs, Will Graham/Abigail Hobbs/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: The Nursery at the Top of the House [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006617
Comments: 16
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure how to tag exactly. I might overthink things for the distinctions for dub-con and/or non-con in terms of how things should be tagged. The dub-con comes from initial encephalitis Will, as well as power differentials and manipulation aplenty. Feel free to let me know if you think the tags should be changed.

Water drips from his hair in heavy drops and steady streams. He’s soaked to the bone. His coat lies left behind over Alana, broken as she is and pummeled further by rain. He doesn’t know if he will ever get it back. He doesn’t know if he’ll even need it. As he moves towards the kitchen, the chill that spills out from his spine has nothing to do with the weather and can’t possibly be solved by something so simple as a coat.   
  
The house is dead silent: no music, live from a harpsichord or played from a well-loved recording; no sounds of food being diligently prepared, no clinking of utensils, no clanging of pots and pans, no roar of flames from burners, or sizzles from cooking meat; and no voices, no declarations of a feast, no hushed, reverent words in the darkness. As he creeps through each of the shadowy rooms, the only sounds are his own panting breaths and the creaks of his steps against the hardwood floor.  
  
As he approaches the kitchen, there is glass shattered on the floor and blood seeping, thick and bubbling, from under a door. The evidence of destruction makes the silence eerier. It is the eye of the storm – peaceful and dangerous, calm and foreboding. He knows of the devastation but can find no sign of its creator. The only sound is an intake of breath, sudden and startling. He raises his gun quickly on instinct and drops it just as fast.  
  
“Abigail,” Will whispers into the open air, in awe of the sight of her standing among the wreckage.  
  
“Will,” she greets with a sweet smile.  
  


* * *

  
The last time he'd seen her outside of his nightmares and daydreams and fully in the flesh had been many months before. He’d been soaked to the bone then too. It had been a sickly sweat, burning with flush and punctuated by fevered chills. She’d looked at him with her big blue eyes, innocent, naïve, seasoned, perceptive. Too perceptive and less innocent than he’d imagined, she’d seen him unraveling with those wide eyes.   
  
“You seem sick, Will,” she’d said with a hand to his clammy forehead.  
  
He’d shuddered not with fever or chill but with pained relief as she’d placed a kiss right at the center of his forehead above his eyebrows. His eyes had slid closed and he’d choked back a whine. Her hands had been so strong but delicate as they petted at his hair. She’d placed a kiss next against his lips and he’d startled in surprise.  
  
He’d wanted her without being able to have her. He’s long wanted to curl her so tightly in his arms that she merged with his heart and he could keep her confined and protected within his ribcage. He felt the desire so painfully acute for so long. He often thought of it and just as often tried not to think of it, but no matter how fiercely he tried, the feeling was always there. Driven to exhaustion with the weight of it, he one time researched the feeling – why he found her so lovely he wanted to both care for her and crush her – and tried desperately to find some reasoning to convince himself it wasn’t because of her father.  
  
He’d felt nothing like her father as she kissed him. He’d felt only adoration for the softness of her lovely lips.  
  
His lips had felt so terribly dry and harsh in comparison. He’d licked across them when she’d pulled back for a moment and he imagined he could taste how sweet she was. His brain felt hotwired and crisscrossed, senses and feelings converged and blurred. Surprise became awe. The intensity of her gaze burned at his overheated blood. The loveliness of her hands at his shoulders smelled like bitter almonds. He’d imagined the delicate, elegant dessert Hannibal could make with it and his mouth nearly watered as she kissed him again.  
  
She’d used her hands as anchors as she shifted to settle in his lap. He moaned in pleasure at the pressure of her thighs against his, the certainty of her weight in his lap. The press of her crotch against where his cock strained against his pants fueled his fevered flush and made it burn brighter, a flame fanned by shame.  
  
“You shouldn’t be traveling. You should be in a hospital,” she tutted. Her affectionate disapproval drifted alongside the sweetness of her breath and cooled the sweat on his skin. “Why did you bring me here?”  
  
“I want answers,” he’d insisted. That, at least, he’d known was true.  
  
Her hands slid from his shoulders to his hair. She’d tangled her slim, nimble fingers in deep at the roots and gave a firm tug. He sighed as his eyes slid closed and he rolled his neck towards her grip.  
  
“It wasn’t to get away?” she’d questioned. He could hear the way she pouted at him, knew behind closed eyes how she pursed her lips and wrinkled her brow. He’d mapped her expressions in his mind many times before and desperately tried to convince himself the study was merely part of a greater riddle.   
  
“No,” he replied. Although he’d been honest, his voice had wobbled and betrayed him.  
  
“You don’t want to run away with me?” she’d asked. Her thighs had tightened as she rubbed against him. His cock had throbbed, strained, and begged for more as she shifted her hips. The rub had been curious, almost as if testing for something – though he didn’t know what.  
  
“I didn’t say that,” he groaned. He had to keep himself from putting his hands on her legs or her hips or her back. He fisted them at his side, grabbed handfuls of cheap comforter and gripped so hard he thought he might tear it.  
  
The fingers in his hair gave another light tug as she’d asked, “Do you want to save me, Will?”  
  
“Yes,” he sighed. The tension in his body had strained to hold as his head spun. The pull at his hair sent tingles across his skin and along his scalp. He’d felt woozy with fever and warmth and tenderness.  
  
Her hands slipped from his hair and she locked her arms around his neck. He felt the press of her cheek and the breath of air with her whisper as she’d said, “Do you think you’ve been saving me from you?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he gasped, held unrelenting in her clutches and at her mercy.  
  
“I know you’ve wanted to touch me,” she whispered at his ear. She gave another roll and twist of her hips and he bit back a moan. The constraint of his pants hurt. Everything felt hypersensitive. He could feel the teeth of his zipper dig against his cock as it begged for something soft, warm, and wet.  
  
“I couldn’t,” he’d said, though it sounded like a whimper or moan.  
  
“Says who?” she’d asked, so kindly like someone might ask if he were being bullied.  
  
“Alana,” he admitted. He'd gritted his teeth at the memory of being forbidden from visiting too soon, from forming a bond, from asking too much. He clenched his fists harder and imagined fabric shredding.   
  
“She doesn’t make decisions for me,” she’d said, so firm, so sure. She’d released the lock of her arms and anchored herself back at his shoulders to shove him back flat against the bed. His mind swam at the motion and the meaning as she loomed over him. Her dark hair fell like black-out curtains framing his view. There had been only her and her wide eyes as she’d asked, “Does Alana make decisions for you?”  
  
He held his hands up and open by his head, a surrender. He’d licked his lips again as he said, “I’m not sure I’ve been making good decisions lately.”  
  
“Do you want me to make decisions for you?” she’d asked as her hands fiddled with the button at the top of his shirt.  
  
“I don’t know if you can,” he’d answered, a sad, cynical smile at his lips.  
  
“You don’t think I can make decisions?” she’d questioned. Her fingers undid the first button of his shirt, then the second, then a third. He could see a frown return to her lips as she said, “You think I’m broken, _stained_.”  
  
“You’re vulnerable,” he’d said as he’d wished so ardently that he could kiss that frown away or brush his hand through her silky, straight hair.  
  
“You’re vulnerable too. Two vulnerable people with decisions to make,” she’d remarked absently when she had the last button undone. She spread his shirt open and stroked her hands against the skin she’d laid bare. He’d groaned as she’d curiously dragged a hand from near his shoulders down to right above his belt buckle and back up to his neck. He could feel her fingertips pressed lightly against his racing pulse as she asked, “Do vulnerable people not still deserve the freedom of choice?”  
  
When she brought their mouths together, he didn’t resist. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t find it in him to resist when he knew she didn’t want him to. Lost in his ache for her touch and the sweet, pleased satisfaction she gifted to him, at long last he was free from the thoughts of why he shouldn’t and the plight of ambivalence.  
  
She held him with her hands at his jaw as she kissed him. His hands grasped at the outsides of her thighs and held the lean meat of them in his grip. She barely gave him space to breathe, pulling breath after breath from him and giving none in return. He could focus only on the desperate need for air and the desperate need to never separate even for a moment to have it.  
  
“This is almost like a vacation,” she’d said as she pulled away. Her panting breaths had matched his. “Here sharing a hotel room alone with you.”  
  
He’d smiled at her as he brushed her hair behind her ear and felt the soft strands as he’d been wanting to. Her hair had felt exactly as wonderful he’d expected. He brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek, such a lovely shade of pink, so splendid against the cool blue of her eyes.  
  
“Enjoy it as a vacation. Far away from Alana and whatever rules she whispered in your ear,” she told him as she held his wrist and nuzzled against his hand. She looked at him deep in his eyes, burrowed into his brain, and sank down into his heart. “You’re here with me.”  
  
“Yes, sweetheart,” he’d whispered as his other hand moved from her thigh to her hip.  
  
“That’s right,” she’d hummed in satisfaction.  
  
She pulled away and laid beside him on the bed. As she’d unbuckled her belt, pushed away her pants, and peeled away her underwear, Will had done the same next to her. Her shirt came next and so did his until there was only one thing left.  
  
Will brushed her hair back and away. She’d watched him fondly as his hands pulled at the knot of her scarf until it loosened. The fabric fell away to show the scar that had not yet had a chance to fade. He’d held a hand gently to the other side of her throat and guided her to tilt her head and bare her throat so that he could nuzzle and kiss at the bright red line across her skin. It was tender but healing, fragile but mending. She’d moaned light and airy into his ear as he licked along the length of it.   
  
“You are not my father,” she’d reminded him as one of her hands grasped at his back and the other held encouragingly at the back of his head.  
  
“Yes, sweetheart,” he’d murmured against her skin.  
  
He’d placed himself between her legs, touched the soft skin of her breasts and her belly, caressed at the soaked insides of her thighs, and stroked at where she was wet and warm. She’d gasped at the touch of his fingers to her clit as he sucked a dark bruise to cover the scar at her throat. Her breathy moans in his ears punctuated the slide of his fingers in and out. She’d stretched so well, so eagerly around one finger, then two.  
  
“Inside,” she’d gasped against his ear as her hands grasped eagerly at his skin.  
  
He nodded silently as he took hold of his cock, sensitive and throbbing. Desperate for touch and overwhelmed by it, the stroke of his hand pulled a moan from his throat. He spread his precum and her slick as he stroked. Her thighs dug into his waist as she rolled her hips towards him and whined impatiently. The sound made his heart lurch in his chest and he urged her legs spread wide again to give her what they both craved and needed.  
  
He nearly collapsed once he’d pushed in as deep as he could. Her pleased whimper echoed in his ears as he braced himself on his elbows above her. Tremors shook through his muscles and rushed over his head and he panted gasping breaths against her hair. She slid her hands by her head to slip between his clenched fingers and interlace them together. Her laughter was breathy and light in his ear as she rubbed her smooth, soft cheek against his clammy, stubble-rough one.  
  
“You’ll take care of me, won’t you?” she coaxed.   
  
He squeezed her fingers in his as he leveraged himself higher on his knees and spread her legs wide and high around his hips. When he’d kissed her, he’d lost himself in her. Her moans, whimpers, and whines guided his lips against hers and his hips as he thrust in and out. A whimper would vibrate against his lips as she gasped for breath and he would recapture her lips as he fed her pleasure back to her. She cried out, sharp and sweet, as he tilted his hips and thrust in deep. He’d kept himself just like that. He’d hit the same spots with the same angle again and again until her mouth fell open in needy, panting breaths and couldn’t be recaptured again.  
  
He lost himself in her pleasure and the way it echoed and reverberated and amplified in his skull and under his skin. Each of her sweet whines was his. Anything that brought her pleasure gave him satisfaction, an endless loop of affection and devotion. When her fingers squeezed in his and her hole tightened and clenched desperately, she pulled his pleasure from him, demanded it of him. He came with his own gasp and spilled deep inside. As he’d filled her, she pulled everything she could from him and, for a moment, he felt like he was hers just as she was his to have and to claim.   
  
As he settled back into his skull and the oversensitive tingle faded from his skin, he pulled away. When she whined in protest, he kissed the pink blush on her cheeks and pet the hair away from her sweaty forehead. The touch of his fingers against her clit had her gasping again. Her eyes opened wide and her pupils overtook most of the pretty blue of her irises. She pulled in heavy, shuddering breaths as Will carefully but surely touched and rubbed. So sweet, soft, and sensitive, she came whimpering his name.  
  
They were boneless and breathless as he laid down beside her. In the near silence, they both stared at the ceiling fan as it turned and cast barely-there gusts of air down across their sweat-damp, naked bodies, left without each other’s warmth for protection. The tears that slipped from her eyes matched his own.  
  
“Do you think you could love me, Will?” she whispered softly.  
  
Despite the protest of his exhausted muscles and aching bones, he turned over in bed, kissed her forehead, and murmured achingly, honestly to her, “Yes, sweetheart.”  
  
“Good,” she’d sighed.  
  


* * *

  
He’d been heartbroken when he thought she’d died, thought he’d killed her right after she’d offered him such kindness and comfort. He’d been disgusted with himself that he couldn’t honor the gift of her clarity. She’d told him he wasn’t her father and he thought he’d used the reassurance to consume her.  
  
Standing here together in another blood-soaked kitchen, he must now realize not only the naiveté of believing he could harm or consume her of his own volition but also his thoughtlessness in never considering that losing an ear isn’t _life-threatening_.  
  
He never thought to hope he might see her again outside the confines of his mind. To see her there, neck bare and tears in her eyes, she is more alive than he ever dared to dream. Although the encephalitis is long since gone, he can hardly believe his eyes. She looks healthier than he remembered – well-fed, styled, and primped. Her hair is brushed smooth and her clothes are clean and colorful. As he stands before her cold, wet, and grey, she shines brighter, warmer like rays through a thundercloud. Although her skin is so pale he’s not sure when she last saw the sun, her radiance pulls him in like gravity.  
  
He approaches slowly, lowering his gun and setting it on the counter. He feels almost afraid she might be a mirage that could disappear with one wrong move. She takes his hand easily and simply as soon as he’s close enough. When she doesn’t disappear with the touch of their hands, she convinces him of this surreal reality. He has remembered this touch every day since he believed her to be dead, but his imaginations could never quite recreate it. In his stream inside his mind, he’d imagined handing her a lure but their fingers never even brushed. Here she is now taking his hand in hers.  
  
His eyes follow the joining of their hands. He watches the movement as she brings their hands towards her. His chest tightens and aches at the sight of her blood-red shirt stretched tight across the dramatic swell of her belly. The curve of it so wide and round on her skinny, slight frame, she looks somehow so much smaller in comparison, almost as if she has been taken over. The rounded curve is warm, solid, and _there_ when she places his hand against it. She blinks away her tears and her eyes shine with joy as little feet or fists knock against her skin and the palm of his hand.  
  
“ _Abigail_ ,” he sighs as his throat clenches and his mouth goes dry. She is so _alive_ , so perfectly, absolutely _alive_ and carries with her not only her one miraculous life, but another growing, developing soon-to-be one. It is at once gratifying and horrifying. He grits his teeth at the thought of her in a limbo of life and afterlife, of being hidden away and presumed dead as she grew and swelled with new life, and to think that he mourned her when she needed him most.  
  
“Do you feel it?” she asks him. She keeps her hand pressed down affectionately on his, encouraging him to feel the movement under her skin as her other hand touches lightly at his cheek.   
  
He nearly whines with the care, fondness, and unease. “I do,” he promises.  
  
Pulled in further with her gravity, he leans into her touch and down towards her lips. She breathes new life into him and warms him from the inside. Rain still drips down his hair while anywhere she touches sees sunshine. His hand against her belly burns hottest.   
  
“I’ve wanted to share this with you,” she tells him when she pulls away. She presses a kiss to his damp, cold cheek as she says, “We’ve been waiting so long.”  
  
The warmth and softness of her voice and the look in her eyes makes him ache with fierce longing. He feels too full and too empty, well-fed but never sated. It is a feeling Hannibal has cultivated him many times before. Encouraged to feast on food and violence, Hannibal has still made sure that the craving is never fully satisfied.  
  
“Where is he?” he whispers.  
  
She flits her eyes over his shoulder with demure blinks of her lashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think! Comments are always cherished and appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

It is a macabre family portrait, but apt: a soft, perfectly tidy young woman with a scar on her neck alongside a morose man soaked to the bone with scars through his shoulders and battle in his head. Looking through a frame lined with splintered wood and blood, Hannibal can only see his most awe-inspiring, painstaking tableau yet. Even bloodied and rumpled and certainly not dressed properly, he feels as if he were in a museum. As he stands there behind an invisible line, he looks upon artwork that might decay with too reckless a touch or too heavy a sigh.  
  
With the blink of Abigail’s eyes, Will’s posture grows straighter, though still not quite the tension or determination Will could have. Hannibal knows of the warrior that has been training for this exact arena. He knows what Will is capable of and it’s more than this. Will has everything he needs to make his decision if only he will recognize it. Hannibal knows what it takes to encourage him and make the cogs and gears that whir and grind in Will’s head _click_.  
  
“You were supposed to leave,” Will whispers as he turns, voice wobbling around trembling breath and clenched teeth. Hannibal can see the shock in his expression, wide-eyed. It nearly matches how Abigail’s eyes seemed at her start too.   
  
“We couldn’t leave without you,” Hannibal informs him. In all the challenges and complexities, this has been the simplest aspect of the plan. Hannibal looks to Abigail, who shines in the corner as Sin is depicted bathed in light between Satan and Death. Although her expression holds none of Sin’s anguish or suffering, there remains a desperation that pools in her eyes. She’s always so _impatient_.   
  
Hannibal approaches Will slowly. He knows just how suddenly the man can strike if he wants to and Hannibal has created the circumstances to tempt him towards wanting it very much. The hand he raises to hold at Will’s cheek is soft and tender. It is important for Will to feel both his own violence and tenderness so that they might guide him. With Will’s jaw in his palm, he brushed his thumb across Will’s cold, pale cheek. It is a touch that holds the affection he has for both Will and his volatility.  
  
“A family should be together,” Hannibal whispers, his voice quiet and raw.   
  
Hannibal slips his hand to a firmer grip at the nape of Will’s neck. His pull is quick and sure, bringing Will’s body flush with his. Will’s muscles are tense under his fingers as Hannibal brings their mouths together. The slight slackness of Will’s lips comes paired with the tight clench of a hand at Hannibal’s shoulder.

* * *

  
  
Abigail had run straight into his arms when she saw him. There in the kitchen of her childhood home, she curled herself into his hold just the same as she had in the kitchen in his home when she’d confessed and he’d sworn to protect her. She tucked her face against his neck with shallow, anxious breaths and he could smell the adrenaline that rushed through her veins and squeezed at her heart. He held her slight frame against his and, as he tipped his head against the smooth softness of her hair, marveled at how she put her fragile self knowingly and happily into his hands.   
  
She was so sweet as she let him drain her blood. Her wide eyes looked at him softly as he slid the needle into her vein. Her voice showed no lingering wobble or quiver as her blood filled the glass jar closer and closer to the top. She let him spill that blood with an arm around her waist in the very room where her blood had been spilled before. It was the very room where he’d put his hand to her throat as blood gurgled from a gruesome wound and a blood-soaked Will filled the air with the sound of shaky, heaving breaths. She did it with as much ease and grace and good humor as when she held his hand on the plane ride home and slept with her head on his shoulder.  
  
As she slept, he’d tipped his nose once more to her hair and, in the wake left behind by the fade of adrenaline and faraway scent of blood, smelled instead the salt of sweat and the musk of sex. A fevered sweetness had rubbed off on her alongside a scent that evoked the humble nostalgia of drinking whiskey in the dark by a campfire. Hannibal had soothed his stab of jealousy with deep breaths from her hair and skin. It would have to suffice.   
  
He knew then that she would be the most wonderful lure. She had already managed to catch Will in her trap once. She enticed Will and managed to snag him. Every unsuccessful endeavor primed for later success. Although Will had torn free, Hannibal had every faith that Will could be enticed once more if the trap was hidden a little more carefully and the bait was more difficult to resist. Will would not be convinced simply by asking or even by the most careful turnings of phrases. That would be too obvious. Hannibal knew that to catch Will, they would need to appeal to his basest instincts.  
  
After Hannibal removed her ear in the basement of his home, he tucked her tightly under crisp, clean sheets in a bed. As she slept, he made his trip to Wolf Trap and he returned home before she woke. Her breaths were a soft, but present white noise as he tidied the instruments he’d used and washed away the last remnants of her blood. When everything was returned to its proper spot and all components but one were fully in place, he returned to her bedside. He took her hand and brushed her hair away from her face and around her bandages. As she sluggishly blinked her eyes open, she’d been nearly as pale as the pristine, white bedding and the bandages not yet soaked through.  
  
“My little lovely,” he said as he pet along the side of her face and studied her pallor. “I have one last proposition for you.”  
  
When she licked her lips, he lifted a glass of water with a straw. She took a few sips and tipped her head back against the pillow and then winced as the motion ever so slightly jostled the bandages.  
  
“What is it?” she asked blearily.  
  
“I want to reunite you with our dear Will someday,” he reassured her. “He may need extra incentive to be convinced.”  
  
Her eyes were so wide and desperate as she asked, “Am I not enough?”  
  
He’d given her a sad smile and brushed a tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb. She smelled less of sex and Will by then. As he kissed at her cheek, he searched for any last trace, but with time and travel, the scent of disinfectant and blood superseded – _a pity_.  
  
“Our beloved Will is a conflicted man,” he reminded her. “He needs our help to resolve the conflict.”  
  
“How?” she’d whispered.  
  
“With what has entrapped men since the dawn of time,” he told her as he laid a hand over her middle and smoothed the layers of clothing and bedding.  
  
She’d taken to that portion of the plan with as much grace as she had the rest of it, if not more. Beyond the fog of pain medications and anesthetics, her eyes had been open and alight. The blue of them had seemed especially bright and her lips were bitten particularly pink. When he kissed her, her lips had been so sweet, even as dry as they were. She tasted of a soft airiness that reminded him of a dessert served with a spun sugar nest. He could taste Will in the sweetness — or, rather, taste the sweetness Will sought in her and craved. Hannibal savored it as he savored the actual taste of Will on her and in her. It was the salty to her sweet, a perfect balance just as it should be.  
  
She’d whimpered, gasped, and moaned for him as he touched her with the admiration she deserved. As he stroked along her skin and brought her pleasure, he made promises he was dedicated to keeping. When he laid himself on top of her, that would be only the first time. When he spilled inside her, it would be one of many. They were committed to ensuring that she would catch and would come together as many times as was needed until they were certain.  
  
From that day, he hid her away in the basement alongside his meat and medicine. The sharp, sterile scent faded too as bandages were peeled away and became extraneous. When her ear healed, she no longer carried the scent of blood. In the place of blood, whiskey, antiseptic, another scent grew and bloomed. As Abigail shied away from the meat he brought down for her on a silver tray, Hannibal could smell the development of a dry, hearty scent on her skin, like bread dough left to rise.  
  
“They spoke beautifully of you in court today, my sweet,” he’d said as he gathered her into his arms. Although an inhale was minty with the smell of recently brushed teeth, the scent of vomit lingered and stung at his nose.  
  
He’d closed his eyes as he pressed his cheek against the top of her head and thought of the image that had been used for the trial. It was the picture that Will hadn’t been able to look away from. Lit by warm sunlight that shined in her eyes and cast a glow against her dark hair, it was a photo of the simple Midwestern, college-bound eighteen-year-old.  
  
It was the version of Abigail that Will never truly experienced and one that neither Will nor Hannibal could say with certainty ever existed. Will crafted an afterimage of Abigail from photos, ideals, and dreams alike – an imago pinned in a lightbox, ideal and enduring. The Abigail that sat in Hannibal’s hold was paler, deprived of sunlight and under the bluer tones of the harsher fluorescent lighting. She would look cold even without the basement’s chillier temperature. She was no less beautiful for it. If only Will could see her then and actually _see her_ , then Hannibal wouldn’t have to compete with an illusion.  
  
In court, when the slide clicked over to the next photo Will flinched: Abigail’s severed ear.  
  
Hannibal pushed back her hair to look at what was left behind. With no ear to tuck it behind, he intertwined her hair between his fingers to keep it out of the way. She shifted restlessly in his hold as he touched at it lightly with just the tips of his fingers. She could get self-conscious from time to time, but she didn’t need to be. After he’d cut it away in a jagged mess by necessity, he’d done his best to repair the wound as neatly as he could.   
  
“What if they convict him?” she’d asked. Then she took a deep, controlled breath in and out as if battling with revulsion and another round of sickness at the idea.  
  
Hannibal hummed and kissed just shy of the part in her hair. “It would be inconvenient, but not impossible.”  
  
She’d turned her head up towards him and held him in her gaze as she whispered, “I don’t want him to be there.”  
  
“Neither do I,” he agreed simply. His lips turned up at the corner as he touched his fingertips to the softness of her cheek.  
  
Within the confines of his cage, Will would envision the smiling, jovial Abigail while the images of Abigail that Hannibal had to cherish were of two sorts: Abigail glowing and growing with their child and Abigail kneeling by the cooling body of her kill. One of these was more common than the other, but he cherished them each in their own way. There was a soothing joy in repetition and exhilarating anticipation to the rare; the way a first time held special significance and the many times after held trust. Nicholas Boyle, as Abigail’s first kill, was the one that joined them together and as Abigail’s second kill, Beverly Katz was the one that reinforced their bond.  
  
However, with the kind of reciprocity and entropy that their existence thrived on, what strengthened Abigail’s connection with Hannibal weakened the one he had with Will. He contended with the idyllic version of Abigail that Will kept in his mind, the _unidyllic_ image he had of Hannibal, and an _admirer_.  
  
Will whispered hushed words of praise for the admirer as he looked Hannibal straight in the eye. He’d proclaimed great understanding and gratitude so that Freddie could peddle it far and wide. This admirer gave Will a gift much more quickly than the one Hannibal and Abigail had to incubate and Will rewarded the admirer’s lack of patience with what Hannibal was denied. With Freddie’s article still open on the screen, Hannibal had set aside the tablet on his office desk and left for home before the screen had even faded to black.  
  
He went down to the basement right away when he returned home. At first, Abigail didn’t even react to him. She’d been lying in bed with a book and simply continued to read as she turned the page. She’d grown more accustomed to him coming and going. Sometimes he only had the opportunity to drop food off and there was no need to bother with getting up – especially when fatigue, lightheadedness, and headaches would be only so happy to punish her for it.  
  
As he approached, he dragged his hand up her leg, from the round bone at her ankle, along the turn of her knee, and up across the jut of her hip bone. Any attention she’d had on her book went to him instead as he slipped his fingers below the edge of her shirt. The fabric caught between his fingers and peeled back as he slipped his fingers higher. He sat on the bed and leaned down to press his lips against the skin underneath as it was revealed. He could smell how her scent changed as she grew and felt the softest of changes under his lips. There was not much to show for their efforts yet but there would be with time.  
  
Abigail’s book dropped away and she bit her lip as she stared, but she let him touch without a word. She held her arms up to help him slip her shirt over her head and lifted her hips so he could strip away her pants. She made herself bare for him all the while simply watching him, her eyes so round that they might seem innocent if one didn’t realize just how much she could see with them.  
  
He’d prepared her quickly. He wanted her ready and eager for him and knew how to do so with ease. He knew how to touch, where to put his mouth, how to use his tongue, and how to curl his fingers. He pulled moans from her lips as he sucked at her skin until bruises bloomed in a bright pink, almost red. He kissed her as she leaned up to meet him and she scratched at his back as he made her whimper for more. Her short nails were usually too blunted to scratch, but she dug and scraped against his back as hard as she was able. He’d felt lines stinging and red crisscrossing his back as he’d asked her to turn on her hands and knees.  
  
As she turned over her dark hair spilled over her face and onto the pillow. He dragged his fingers from the notch at the top of her spine down to her tailbone and felt how she arched her back as she shivered. Her fists gripped in her pillow while her breaths came out in gasps. Her moan was smothered slightly as he pushed into her. He thrust in deep and slow and felt as her body welcomed him and received him as it had many times before.  
  
He’d braced himself over her against one elbow and slipped his other hand lower to feel at the swell rising between her hips. Their child had taken root and her body accommodated as they grew. She would continue to stretch and strain for their benefit and grow more beautiful all the while. He closed his eyes and envisioned how his hands would be filled. His palm tingled as he imagined his hand being pushed away by the swell of Abigail’s belly and how it would hang low as it grew heavy with their baby. Her back would arch as her womb distended further and rounder and took over her frame. The bigger she grew the closer they would be to having everything they needed. He nearly went woozy with pride at the thought.  
  
Will’s acolyte may have charted an apparent path to Will’s freedom, but as he had Abigail underneath him and in his hands, Hannibal felt assured. The plan that they had conceived would deliver them far beyond something so simple as _freedom_. Hannibal and Abigail would offer Will a new world all of their own.  
  
Hannibal felt himself become tenacious. The sounds of Abigail’s moans and his hips smacking against her skin faded. The pound of his blood and the demands of his pleasure blurred everything else at the edges. He thought only of spilling and seeding. Even though something was already growing, he felt wild with the need for more. He wished with every push and pull of his hips that he might bend her body further to his purpose and she might grow sooner and faster if he’d wished it. It was only as he finally spilled deep inside her that he heard her stuttering cries of pleasure. As he filled her further, he laid across her back and brushed the hair back away from her face. As he’d kissed at her flushed cheek, he’d felt it twitch with a smile.  
  
That the admirer’s gift would be discovered as foul’s gold soon after had come at no surprise. The capacity to surprise Hannibal was a talent wielded by Will alone. Will demonstrated that when he used his follower for his own agenda. The thought of Will consciously deciding to set violence in motion had brought Hannibal some satisfaction and even some pride. While he would ideally wish that the blood pouring into the drain wasn’t his own, that blood was spilled by Will’s own intentions showed great progress.  
  
As Hannibal grew woozier with blood loss and lack of oxygen, he thought of Will and Abigail’s reunion without him. He grit his teeth not because of the tension of the rope at his jaw but the thought that they might carry on just the two of them. Will might cherish his imago, hold onto what he imagined might be the best of Abigail, while he condemned the worst he saw in Hannibal. Just before the bucket was kicked away, Hannibal thought of the traces he left of himself in Will’s mind. As he gasped for breath, he hoped neither Will nor Abigail would ever be rid of him. If he were to die, he hoped pieces of their subconscious might call out for him until their dying days.  
  
As his arms were stitched and a bruise bloomed around his neck, Hannibal knew then that nothing so slight or nuanced as the subconscious would suffice. For all that Will had been a man of intricacies, some things must be made crystal clear. He had left traces of himself in the well of Will’s mind, but just laying seedlings in a well wouldn’t guarantee that they grew. They would need to be fed.  
  
When Hannibal returned to Abigail, the long, wide slices had been pulled back together and secured by x’s of dark black stitches along each wrist. It had been much longer than he intended since Abigail last ate and when he saw her, she had the rumpled look that told him she’d tried to sleep through hunger. Even so, she ignored the food he brought her for dinner.  
  
“ _Hannibal_ ,” Abigail gasped when she saw the cuts. She sat Hannibal on her bed with her and hovered her fingers just above his wounds as if afraid to touch.  
  
The concern in her eyes made him think of Alana’s as she’d sat at his side at the hospital and offered to drive him home. Alana and Abigail both showed anger and confusion in similarly furrowed brows.  
  
“What is this?” she’d asked.  
  
His voice felt rough and caught in his throat as if the rope was still around it as he replied, “Will.”  
  
“ _Will?_ ” she replied as her hand gripped higher at his elbow. “Is he out?”  
  
“His admirer,” he answered. He ignored how disappointment shown in her eyes where concern had only just a little while ago held the throne alone. As he clenched his fist, he’d felt how it pulled tightly at skin held together by sutures. “He is upset with me for Beverly, for you, for Alana. Past, present, and future.”  
  
“Are we going?” she asked as her voice quavered.  
  
“No,” he reassured her as he rested a hand on her belly. It had rounded into her lap a little more while he had been out, but there was still much more growth to be had. She would need to be hidden further away so that Will wouldn’t find her too soon.  
  
Her fingers were ice-cold as she laid her hand easily over his. “Does this mean he is close?” she’d asked instead.  
  
“He is ready to go home,” Hannibal remarked. “But not to us, not yet.”  
  
“Shouldn’t we be his home?” she’d said and she’d seemed so forlorn. The fatigue, the hunger, the loneliness, he could see it all on her face. He felt it too in how his veins felt emptier of blood.   
  
He’d leaned in to kiss her. “We will be,” he told himself as much as he told her.  
  
Miriam had to be moved after that to make way for Abigail and the space left behind in his home then was so vast and complex that it could only be filled by two. Gideon occupied Abigail’s domain in the basement for a short while and Alana took up Abigail’s place in his bed for a while longer.  
  
Discussions with Gideon were entertaining enough and company was preferable to no company. Gideon certainly was no Will or Abigail, but Hannibal had gotten used to having someone to dine with. Sleeping with Alana was as pleasant as sex always could be, but was not as it _should_ be. When he took Alana to his bed, it felt partial at best – untainted by jealousy but lacking in connection.  
  
When he looked in Alana’s eyes, he saw no comprehension. Any affection was cheapened in how it was directed at a version of him that did not truly exist. Alana’s eyes didn’t widen with need and shine with mischief. She looked at Hannibal with a rather one-tone seduction. It was effective in that it managed to garner a certain endearment. Alana used her charms and intelligence to her advantage and did it well. Even so, when he had Alana on her hands and knees, he felt disappointed that the touch of his hand to the space between her hips fell flat. There was nothing taking root there – no complex, marvelous little thing growing more and more into _something_.  
  
Abigail in the meantime had grown rounder and rounder in a gradual progression. Throughout her time in the basement, he’d had the privilege of watching her as what started as only the smallest hint low in her hips curved upwards and outward over time. He touched her with hands both clinical and affectionate as things developed just as expected. He assessed her with tape measures and the press of his hands and felt the movements and shifts that came from within. He printed ultrasounds and drew pictures, keepsakes kept for later. Will could flip through the collection once they were on their way.  
  
To have Abigail far away denied him the opportunity to continue his study. He had to witness the growth in bursts and swells instead. This was a price he paid for their design and for the sake of having Will close and Hannibal had him released shortly thereafter.  
  
Hannibal wasn’t disappointed by Will’s rage, his cruelty, or his seduction. In fact, he was pleased by how Will intermingled all three. Will arrived promptly for his appointment as if Hannibal’s office was his own and he had no reason for leaving. Will brought himself close enough to touch and tempt. He looked over his shoulder with the look of a man who knew what he could give and _when_ he would give it and would do so at _his_ leisure. Will’s hands were unbound, but he still withheld. He allowed Hannibal to touch at his hand and his cheek and whisper praise and affection but did not give in. Hannibal could kiss at his mouth, but Will’s lips were otherwise sealed.  
  
Will allowed him affection in bits and pieces and made sure to remind Hannibal that as true as it may have been that being nearer was pleasanter than afar, easing an ache did not make it absent. Will laid crumbs leading to his own trap but Hannibal knew if he was patient enough and slight enough of hand, he could pick up his prize without triggering the final slam of the hammer.  
  
When he was greeted in his dining room to the sight of Will presiding over Randall Tier’s body, the surprise and relief he’d felt combined into something like pleasure. With Will, the only methods that would work were high-risk/high-reward. Hannibal’s methods were necessary and not chosen lightly. Will had been too good at suppression, avoidance, and denial for too long and he was too cunning and clever for simple, common tactics to work. His hunger for Will was always there alongside his _usual_ appetites. At that moment, it was its keenest yet. The ache of being denied was more insistent with the knowledge of what could have been lost with the risk.   
  
Hannibal was calm and gentle as he cleaned Randall Tier’s blood from Will’s hands. It was the blood of a sacrifice, a lesser enemy, an anointment. As the water turned red, Hannibal watched Will, a stony sentinel. He craved the feel of Will crumbling from a statue of stone and becoming the dynamic force of nature Hannibal knew him to be.  
  
“Don’t go inside, Will,” he said, with another soft touch to Will’s bloodied knuckles. He tsked his tongue as he felt how Will kept himself contained. Will’s hands were lax and subdued – forced to be limp so as not to give in. Will fought to hide away everything that had come to the surface and hid himself along with it. “Stay with me.”  
  
“Where else would I go?” Will asked. His tone was artificially even, but some of the ferocity still crept through in the sound of his tongue against his teeth.  
  
“You have everywhere to go,” Hannibal cajoled. He wanted Will reassured and confident and _close_. “You should be quite pleased. I am.”  
  
“Of course you are,” Will retorted with a harsh, sharp laugh that made Hannibal smile.  
  
“Your restraint is admirable, dear Will,” Hannibal said as he lifted Will’s hands from the water at last and set about wrapping them. The wind of the bandages around Will’s hands was almost ritual and a touch hypnotic. His eyes met Will’s and he brought Will’s bandaged knuckles to his lips as he continued, “Nearly as admirable as when you allow its release.”  
  
The twist of Will’s neck had been tense and calculated, so stiff that he might have heard Will’s bones creak and grind. Will was silent and still and his eyes were deep wells with unknown secrets down at the bottom and fireflies that might light the way. Hannibal didn’t shy away from the dungeon at the end of his thousand-yard stare. He held Will’s gaze and let his hand rest just inside of Will’s knee. He dragged his fingers up along the seam until he could cup over where Will strained hard against the restriction of his pants.   
  
“What would you have me do, Will?” Hannibal asked as he leaned in closer and pressed more firmly with his hand. “What should I do so that you can be as pleased as I am?”  
  
“I want that treacherous mouth of yours to do what I tell it,” Will said firmly. Hannibal could feel how tightly he was wound in his tone and the moan that he withheld to deny Hannibal the satisfaction. “And I want you to control your teeth.”  
  
“Is that all?” he asked as his fingers were given permission to push away some of the barriers that kept skin from skin.  
  
Will gave a huff of a laugh and Hannibal could almost see the points of his teeth. “For now.”  
  
The feel of Will’s cock in his hand and bringing it into the open air gave Hannibal the feeling of perfect satisfaction. The touch felt right against his fingers and the length and weight of it just _fit_. When Will pushed his chair back from the table and gave room for Hannibal to crouch on his knees on the floor, Hannibal had that same feeling of _rightness_ as he licked and kissed at Will’s cock and sank his mouth down around it. He pulled back and sank down again over and over to relish the feeling as much as he could.  
  
He made it harder and harder for Will to hold in his moans until his grunts and panting breaths reverberated and filled the room. Hannibal moaned his own vibrations along Will’s cock when Will grabbed at his hair and use his hold to keep himself as deep inside Hannibal’s mouth as he could be. Hannibal drew in as much air as he could and greedily touched Will with grips to his thighs and strokes up towards his chest. His own cock throbbed in his pants in demand of attention, but that could be saved for later. Will’s indulgence would come to an end all too soon for his taste and he needed to get his fill while he could.  
  
Although Hannibal could have happily dragged it out for hours, Will demonstrated his precision and his efficiency. Where Hannibal could get satisfaction from the anticipation of a long-awaited, perfect ending, Will preferred the frenzy of the moment and wasn’t interested in any delay. He demanded his pleasure from Hannibal, who was happy to provide until Will came flooding into his mouth. Hannibal recalled the taste and remembered it as Will’s. That he could have lost Will that night made the experience all the sweeter; that instead Will’s kill had been presented to his table made the intimacy a delicacy.  
  
Hannibal remembered just how _content_ Will had looked slumped in his chair in front of the table set with his kill and with legs spread wide so that Hannibal could fit himself between them. Hannibal recalled the clench in his belly and twitch of his cock when Will brushed his thumb against Hannibal’s lip and smiled with such self-satisfaction. Will had pushed his thumb into Hannibal’s mouth and hooked it downward as he mused aloud, “To think that this is how I tame that poisonous tongue.”  
  
If Will wished to stake his claim, Hannibal saw no reason not to let him. He didn’t mind. He let Will exert his jealousy and his control. Hannibal allowed Will to make use of him however he liked, whether he wanted a touch of his hands or the pull of his mouth or to sink deep into his ass. He met Will’s demands for pleasure at the dining room table, in his office, and in his bedroom and hoped Will might get a taste for continuing to have his domain in the spaces Hannibal might have called home.  
  
With Abigail at the house by the bluff growing bigger with every day and Will giving himself over more and more, Hannibal had his assurances that his plan was working and saw no reason not to share in the success. As Margot sat across from him, Hannibal heard how she seemed trapped and lacking in options in ways that reminded him of dear, sweet Abigail. Margo sat so properly and so subdued in her anger and rage that he thought of Abigail and her comfort in the darkness. Although her intent was to free herself rather than trap, many of the principles remained the same.  
  
“Do you know why you failed to murder him, Margo?” he’d asked.  
  
She’d replied, “Poor planning.”  
  
“You failed to murder your brother because you still love him,” Hannibal stated. He considered how both he and Will have stilled their hands when they could easily have done otherwise. He knew he would need to continue to foster in Will a reason to ultimately still his hands when the time came. “In love, you take leave of your senses, but in hatred, you must be present to calculate your actions.”  
  
“I’m lucky I didn’t kill him,” Margot said. Her tone light and pretty as if sounding nicer would make it hurt less to say. “Papa’s will was very clear. Upon the passing of his beloved son Mason, in the absence of a legitimate male heir, the sole beneficiary shall be the Southern Baptist Convention.”  
  
“Even in death, Mason would take everything from you. One of the most powerful forces that shapes us as human beings is the desire to leave a legacy,” he’d said and knew exactly for himself just how true it could be. The legacy he had helped to create would be a strong and vital one. “What legacy would you leave behind?”  
  
“I don’t get a legacy,” she’d replied as if it was obvious, so short-sighted.  
  
“Unless you make one,” he’d told her.  
  
The unfortunate thing about providing another with a plan is that by nature of not having conceived of it themselves, they fail to fully consider the bigger picture. One could be given all the necessary instructions and still fail in the execution. Unfortunately, she’d been particularly insightful when she’d cited _poor planning_ as a particular weakness but failed to _utilize_ that insight accordingly. For Margo, her downfall was to be so shortsighted as to choose Will.  
  
Of course, Hannibal understood her choice. Will possessed many wonderful qualities that the world would do well to have more of. However, Margot was dancing out of tune and stepping on his and Abigail’s toes. It was clumsy and graceless, while Abigail kept her poise despite every challenge. The night before Abigail’s shift dress had been a light, airy fabric that floated around her with such open grace that it had rendered her rather ethereal. When standing, someone unknowing could hardly describe her shape beyond _heavenly_. When she’d smoothed her hand down the front, the outline of her belly rounded her out in a telltale manner so that all might see if only they had the chance.  
  
His more morbid side reminded him that such a dress was not unlike the dress they found Elise Nichols in. Hannibal had made note that perhaps this is not the first dress Will should see her in. Abigail, eager and earnest, asked him about the day of their reunion often as her belly distended further and further from her frame and the baby took up more and more space. The baby gave them a deadline and he wouldn’t disappoint Abigail by having Margot get in the way. 

* * *

  
  
He can feel Will’s teeth, pretty, straight, and _sharp_. Will bares them and threatens to catch Hannibal’s lip on a sharp edge. The ferocity in Will’s eyes is exactly as Hannibal cultivated. Will’s protective instinct has always been the easiest to access. He will forgive Will for pushing him away and for still needing the illusion of protection as an excuse. At some point, they will be able to all recognize the truth, but not now.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Will demands so harshly that his whisper is nearly a hiss. “All this time. How many dinners did we have? How many _conversations?_ ”  
  
“I wanted to surprise you,” Hannibal replies. Will’s look is piercing and furious, but he doesn’t flinch. “You wished I could give her back and I have. And packaged neatly together along with that gift, I have also given you back your child.”  
  
“Nothing gained, nothing lost,” Will says. His tone is devoid of whimsy. It holds the kind of sardonic seriousness as when he’d said “ _even-steven.”_  
  
“The teacup has come back together. Fate and circumstance have returned us to this moment,” Hannibal says as he takes two steps away and stretches out his hand to beckon towards where Abigail awaits. “Abigail, come to me.”  
  
She comes easily, turns herself knowingly, curls herself back into his arms with the ease of habit. One of his hands – the one holding his knife – presses to her belly like habit too. The other holds lightly at her throat as his fingers curl against a scar, faded but risen on her skin. He feels the textured ridge of it as he presses. Abigail gasps into the open air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took forever! I'm determined to get the rest of the fic all done and posted within the next week or two. Abigail's POV is next 👀👀
> 
> I added to the tags, but to be honest I have no idea if I have the tags that I need or not. If you think that I should have any other particular tags, feel free to let me know!
> 
> Please comment and let me know what you think! I realized shortly before I was finished with this chapter, that it might not be what y'all expected...


	3. Chapter 3

Curled into Hannibal’s arms, Abigail blushes. He leans his cheek against her hair and tightens his hold. His arms and chest are warm, not like Will’s cold, rain-soaked hands. She doesn’t feel the damp of blood that she knows is there. Hannibal is decorated with blood from a fight Abigail could only listen to from upstairs. The sounds of slams and crashes and glass shattering would have had her pacing but she’d had to worry about the sound of her footsteps against the floor.  
  
But now the fight is over and even Alana’s shouting no longer echoes through the house. There is only Will and Hannibal’s ragged breathing while her own breaths have to be soft against Hannibal’s hand on her throat. Hannibal’s touch doesn’t constrict her breathing – _not yet_ – just as the knife against her belly isn’t cutting. The edge of it is still blunted only very slightly by fabric stretched thin. Abigail relies on Hannibal’s restraint as she has this many months. It’s been like this all along – held in Hannibal’s grasp, Will just out of reach.  
  
Hannibal told her of this moment many times. In the dark of the night and after too many days left alone, she had so many opportunities to remind herself of it and with so many reminders, it became almost a fairytale. One of the fairytales that have lessons learned with gruesome violence and the heroine is revived when she gives birth. She’s whispered the tale of Will’s arrival to the baby that’s grown inside her with the triumph of the knight arriving at the gates to the castle.  
  
When she looks into Will’s eyes, she sees herself reflected in a pool of tears not yet spilled.  
  


* * *

  
She woke up in a cold, clean room. She felt heavy and tired and she was tucked in so tightly she very nearly felt bound. A dull ache radiated from the side of her head where she knew her ear would no longer be. Hannibal had told her he would take it before he put her under. As she tried to blink her eyes open, her view was partially blocked by the bulky white of bandages and gauze ties. Her vision also blurred with pain and the lingering sedation.  
  
She rolled her head from side to side as if that would help, but her mother always told her she should learn to shake things off. She had only one ear left and she didn’t think she could have heard him right.  
  
Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth and her cheek tingled as she said, “I’m not pregnant.”  
  
His hand was heavy against her belly as he brushed away creases that probably didn’t exist. He was too neat for that. She knew that the performance and meaning of the touch were what was important. She could feel the weight of his touch settle low as he replied, “You could be.”  
  
Under the numbness, she could feel her cheeks pinken. Even with her legs resting normally side-by-side, she pressed her thighs closer against each other. She knew that he knew. She knew because somehow Hannibal _always_ managed to know. He knew when she ran away. He knew when she killed Nicholas Boyle and knew when she dug him up. He knew that she helped her father hunt his prey. He knew to hold her when she was scared. With all that knowing, the thought of Hannibal knowing what she and Will had done still made her flush with the kind of open vulnerability that was the most dangerous around him.  
  
“What if I’m not?” she’d asked hesitantly.  
  
His smile was small and crooked and his eyes showed the same affection she’d seen as he’d drained her blood. “We will make sure you are,” he’d said and sounded like he had when he told her he couldn’t bear to take her fingers.  
  
She anxiously blinked her eyes and her breath was shaky. Her throat was so dry and her words came out in a whisper as she asked, “When will we start?”  
  
His fingertips tapped in pulses against her skin. “As soon as we can.”  
  
“Now?”  
  
Hannibal made a comforting hum as he looked her over. “That may be best.”  
  
She looked him over too. He was without his jacket, vest, and tie. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbow. She assumed this was to keep away from the blood. He thought of everything and had everything under his control. It seemed that he could do anything if he wanted to. She didn’t know if he’d ever had a plan that didn’t work.  
  
“I’m ready,” she’d told him.  
  
Hannibal peeled the blankets back and loosened their hold. Cold crept in as she was uncovered and open air touched at her exposed skin. She was still dressed in the cotton gown he’d given her for the surgery. No need for her clothes to get in the way, he’d said, and they would only risk bloodstains. The fabric felt so thin it might as well not have existed at all. She laid still and watched him. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit her tongue along with it as he discarded his own clothes with unhurried turns of his fingers. Buttons slipped away easily and the fabric was folded neatly and set aside. As she watched, her heart started to pound in her chest. Her fingers twitched and her toes curled. The medication made it a far-off feeling but it was still _there_.  
  
A breath stuttered in her chest when he returned to her. The stride of his feet and movement of his hands were as precise and calculated as ever but there was a gleam in his eyes that she didn’t usually get to see. It had seemed familiar in its sharpness and promise. The last time she’d seen that look in someone’s eyes, it had been blurred and softened with fever and delirium. Hannibal’s eyes couldn’t be clearer.  
  
Despite the throb of her ear – the throb of what _was_ her ear – she tipped her head to the side. She licked at dry lips while Hannibal’s fingers unfastened the snaps at her shoulder. The pop of each snap punctuated the silence and she gasped as Hannibal slid his hand away and pushed the fabric of her gown away from her body. Another shiver of another kind danced across her skin as all of her was exposed to harsh, cold air and the only warmth came when Hannibal repeated the touch to her belly without that false barrier of fabric to separate them.  
  
“We all must do our parts,” he told her as his fingers touched along her skin. More shivers and goosebumps followed behind as he drifted lower and lower. Until he caressed low enough to touch at her clit. “I will be creating a place for us together, so shall you create for us too.”  
  
She gasped loud and sharp as he sent bolts of pleasure up her spine. “It’s only fair,” she’d whispered as she knew he’d wanted. It had been strangely easy to say. Maybe because it felt true.  
  
Her hand was heavy as she shifted it over the sheets and across his thigh to touch her fingers to his cock. That was fair, too. He hummed in approval, an encouraging sound, deep and rumbling from the chest. He rubbed around her clit until he found a pressure and pattern that had her gasping. He blended pleasure with the numbness and pain that wrought her senses until it was almost perfect. Her strokes to his cock are not nearly as coordinated. They couldn’t be when she could hardly think of her hand, but he didn’t seem disappointed. She could feel against her palm how he hardened and throbbed and twitched when she couldn’t help but whimper or moan.  
  
“You will be beautiful,” he’d promised her. He groaned as she turned her palm around the head. She watched his lips shape the words, squinted and strained to see the way he smiled. “Even lovelier than you are now. Irresistible in how your body yields and shapes itself to our creation.”   
  
He made sure the touch of his fingers brought her pleasure as his words washed over her. She was soaking wet until she felt she was dripping and she bit at her lip as she moaned. He gathered the wetness with his fingers. His hands and fingers seemed wide and impossible, but it was so easy for him to slip one finger in that he soon after added a second.  
  
“You are doing wonderfully,” he praised.  
  
He used his quick study to build how pleasure gripped at her belly and desperation made her desperate to be touched and filled. She could feel his sharp eyes on her as he made the pleasure rip through the center of her, contracting in and spilling out. It spread up her spine and across the nape of her neck as she gasped wide-eyed and breathless. Laid flat and spread open for him, her pleasure flowed out of her every nerve ending and she found herself collapsing inward again around an emptiness and a hollowness. She wanted to be closer to him, wanted his mouth on hers, wanted his touch, wanted him to not be so far away. She wanted to cling to him just as they both wanted Will to cling and be kept nearby.  
  
She’d been rewired, they’d told her at Port Haven. She’d learned there that whatever she would love, she might always also fear. She would feel the urge to find familiarity and safety in danger and might always run the risk of confusing uncertainty and fear with love and comfort. In that moment, she knew they were right. She looked at Hannibal’s face and saw his calm and his handsomeness. Even with the pain, the blood, and the chill of the basement, she only wanted him to hold her closer.  
  
She whimpered as he pulled his fingers out and whined when he brought them to his lips and into his mouth. He gave a pleased chuckle as she flushed. Then Hannibal did as he always did, which was to _not_ do what she expected. Rather than settle with his hips between her thighs, she felt a light breath of air ghost against her sensitive, dripping wet cunt.  
  
She gasped at the touch of Hannibal’s tongue. Leisurely and slow at first: a teasing lick, a turn of his tongue around the outside, a long stroke across her hole. Once he dipped his tongue inside of her, she felt thoroughly tasted and savored. The strokes and swirls of his tongue had her foggy head spinning. She grabbed at herself with needy desperation, squeezed at her breast with one hand and her thigh in the other until she could feel the edges of her fingernails digging into her skin. Hannibal pushed in two fingers deep, hooked his fingers, and stroked. He pulled her pleasure from her with his lips and his mouth until a stroke of his fingers and a lick at her clit demanded another orgasm from her.  
  
Only as she fought to catch her breath did he finally move to lay over her. Only when she’d been satisfied twice and left still hungry did he settle himself on top of her and when he rose between her legs, she’d felt so small. His shoulders and chest were broad in displays of strength and power as a hand behind her knee pushed up and held her spread open. The feel of the head of Hannibal’s cock at her hole had her she drawing in a shuddering breath.  
  
Her hands flew to grip at his arms as he pushed in. Thoughts and feelings swam inside her skull and into her body in too much of a frenzy to identify and her breaths came out in pants that shook at her chest and throat. He swallowed those panting breaths when, at long last, he finally kissed her. The taste was salty and mild and she wondered if she might be able to taste Will on herself too. She didn’t doubt that Hannibal could.  
  
With elbows and arms curled against her chest and caged within his hold, she cupped her fingers in a caress at either side of his neck. As he thrust, his fingers curled around the tops of her shoulders and dug into the divots above her collarbone and he _held_. There was no moving, no separating, no escaping. He held her exactly as he wanted her. For her part, she was receptive and she kissed him as much as the pain of her wound would allow. She whined when opening her mouth too wide sent a stab of pain across her face and down her neck. She turned her face against the pillow to appease the pain and moaned weakly as Hannibal’s tongue took the opportunity to lick across her throat and set his teeth there instead. She could feel the edges of them, crooked and sharp, and spread her legs wider.   
  
“ _Please_ ,” she whimpered.  
  
“What do you want, my dear?” he rasped right against her remaining ear. “Do you want me to seal this pact we’ve undertaken?”  
  
The words echoed in her head and settled somewhere deep within that she knew she’d never find. She would never be able to fully remove him from her mind and knew, if Will had not already done it, she might very well be damning herself to carrying Hannibal with her in both body and soul. Even so, there could be no other choice.  
  
There was no going back. There never was.   
  
“Yes,” she vowed.  
  
The puffs of air from slight laughter were damning as they brushed across her flushed, damp skin. The push and pull of his hips grew forceful, harder, and faster. Her arms looped around his shoulders and tightened – desperate still for closeness, full and needing to be filled further. Jostled by the strength of Hannibal’s thrusts, her nipples brushed against his chest hair and sent shockwaves and shivers like icy fingers slipping in the wells between her ribs.  
  
Even with all he’d taken, she still had pleasure to give him and pleasure for him to take too. She felt that the moment she came again, this time he followed her. She could feel it in his muscles, the weight that settled heavier down on top of her, the gust of air that came with relief, and, of course, the spill of him deep inside her. With him in and around her, there was no longer any space for emptiness; when she came once more and she finally felt satisfied.  
  
Being with Will had been like cajoling a scared animal. She only needed to offer him comfort and eventually he would settle down. When he’d hovered above her, he was powerful but docile as far as she was concerned. As Hannibal loomed over and laid against her, he was tender but could never be tamed. She’d always known how danger lived beneath the surface of his every comfort. It was how he’d kept her alive and kept her secrets all along. As Hannibal puffed heavy breaths against her neck, she had the thought that they’d always been building to this: alive, a secret, and under his care.   
  
“Do you think you could love me, Hannibal?” she whispered as she brushed aside some of the bangs that had fallen out of place. They fell back exactly as they were as soon as they slipped from her fingers.  
  
Hannibal took her hand in his and kissed her wrist, right over pulse at it still hammered against her skin. “Yes, lovely girl,” he whispered back.  
  
After that, time would have no meaning in the basement. No sunrise or sunset, no temperature changes to signal times of days or changes of season. She slept through most of the first day, so she didn’t even have sleeping and waking to count on. All she had was her three meals per day, but some days Hannibal’s creations even made it difficult to tell the difference between breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  
  
All she had was him and he visited her regularly. She suspected it was in part due to a fulfillment of their pact and partially an actual affection for her – and maybe something as simple as desire was a little piece of it too. She could also sense that his visits came paired with a desperate loneliness for Will. Hannibal made it hard to really, clearly identify, but the more she had the chance to look at him, the more she could see it in the smoothness of his face or the way the skin under his eyes seemed just a shade darker. She also knew she wouldn’t be able to satisfy that loneliness, not fully. Hannibal couldn’t satisfy her loneliness for Will either, but he helped. So, she tried to do him the same favor.   
  
“How is Will?” she asked as she finished the dinner her brought her. He’d been quiet the whole time she ate. He didn’t even give some sort of poetic explanation for what he’d provided her on the plate.  
  
“He said the light from friendship won’t reach us for a million years,” he’d said as he swirled and sipped at his wine. There was none for her, of course, but he didn’t shy away from savoring it in front of her. She supposed he didn’t need to. She never got the chance to get a taste for it.   
  
She tsked her tongue and pouted for him. “That’s not very nice,” she’d sympathized.  
  
Hannibal simply sniffed his wine again and tipped the glass far enough for another mouthful of wine. The lighting was unforgiving and cast shadows wherever his face sank in even if it was only slight. “We don’t need Will nice,” he told her. “His anger is a part of him like any other.”  
  
For all of Hannibal’s confidence in how much he knew Will, Abigail knew the parts Will held back just as well as he did and she knew better than Hannibal what it _felt_ like to have some of the parts of Will he kept hidden away. When Hannibal set aside her tray with its empty dishes and brought their lips together, she’d met him with a hunger and desperation she remembered feeling a whisper of on Will’s lips. She knew Will would never make her feel the full extent of his frenzy and she knew how he kept his teeth blunted. She knew Hannibal wouldn’t get the same treatment from him and wouldn’t _want it_.  
  
When Hannibal towered over her and once again sunk himself in deep, she put her nails to his back and scratched as she imagined Will might. She smiled when she thought of how he would give Hannibal as good as he got – if not _more_. She dragged her nails across muscle and skin that shifted as he moved until she was sure she might draw blood. She knew Will would be wild and might actually put Hannibal in his place with all his _not very nice_ inclinations. The look in Hannibal’s eyes was so bright and sharp as his hair flopped forward and dampened with sweat. It was by far the most unrefined she had ever seen him. It reminded her of Will too.  
  
Practice made perfect even if they might never have needed the practice in the first place. It had been an otherwise usual day in the way that feeling a little sick had become usual and fatigue was usual in that she could sleep whenever she liked. She’d just been considering a nap when the hatch door opened again. With the ease that Hannibal could procure surgical tools and other medical supplies, he brought an ultrasound machine down to the basement. The sight of it was startling.  
  
She laid back on the same bed where she’d woken up from losing her ear and where she’d welcomed Hannibal so many times and flinched as Hannibal made her even colder with the squirt of gel low on her belly. She thought of every TV show or movie she’d seen and _the_ scene in a doctor’s office. The gel was cold as they always said and Hannibal looked at the machine’s screen as any doctor would. It could almost seem as if she were normal.  
  
Hannibal smiled – almost a _full smile_ – as he looked down at her and announced, “It seems we have been successful, my lovely.”  
  
Her mind had gone blank and she could only think to reply, “ _What?_ ”  
  
Just like in the movies, Hannibal clicked a few buttons and pointed her towards a mess of black and white on the screen. He tapped his finger on a spot shaped sort of similar to what could someday be a baby and told her again, “Our efforts will bear fruit.”  
  
As much as they’d tried to make it so, it still felt so difficult to grasp and, as reliable as Hannibal’s nose was, there was a part of her that didn’t believe him. Even as she was hit with nausea at a painful frequency and regularity and very nearly turned vegetarian with the way her stomach turned at the smell of meat, she found it surreal to actually _believe_ something she’d known to be true.  
  
“I’m really pregnant?” she’d asked.  
  
She knew then what was missing from the scene: someone to hold her hand. Her heart ached with how she wished Will could be there. She imagined how his eyes might light up with the thought of making a life and how grateful he might have been to have made it with her. Her lips and cheeks burned with the absence of the kiss he might have pressed there. But the Will of her imagination might also snatch his hand away from her and look suspiciously at Hannibal by her side.  
  
“What if Will finds out the baby might not be his?” she asked as dread crept in and her hand felt so cold and empty.  
  
“How would that happen, my lovely?” Hannibal said casually as he put away the machine’s wand and started to wipe away the goop low on her belly. He didn’t look away from his tidying as he asked, “Did we not swear to keep each other’s secrets?”  
  
“What if it comes out blonde?” she asked as she thought of Will realizing over time what pieces didn’t quite fit. She wondered how she could ever think he wouldn’t see it.  
  
“My hair has grown lighter over time,” Hannibal assured her. He finished cleaning her skin but didn’t lower her shirt for her. Even though he’d seen her naked at least a dozen times, she’d felt particularly bare. “Will has no knowledge of his mother or her genes and every incentive to believe you beyond reason. It shouldn’t be difficult to convince him.”  
  
“ _Oh,_ ” she’d said because she didn’t know what else she could say. She pressed her fingers against the skin just above her waistband. It felt slightly tacky and had only the slightest of swells.  
  
Hannibal hummed and caught hold of her fingers. He pressed her hand down open and flat instead underneath his palm. “Why do you worry?” he asked as he looked into her eyes and held at her hand.  
  
The look in his eyes made her feel so incredibly vulnerable with no option to flinch away like she might want to. “He might be mad,” she confessed.  
  
“He has forgiven your lies before,” he reminded her.  
  
She flinched with the thought of the blood on her hands that Will overlooked, but she couldn’t say for sure that he _forgave_ her. She thought he might have just felt obligated to forget about them because he thought she’d been murdered too. She worried that when he realized she was alive, he might have less reason to be so generous and even less reason to claim their child as _theirs_.  
  
“Will he forgive yours?” she’d asked Hannibal.  
  
Hannibal’s fingers caressed softly against her skin as he brought his other hand to flick his thumb across her cheek. “If he is dissatisfied at not being the first,” Hannibal declared, “then he may be soothed knowing he can sire many more so long as we are together.”  
  
A shiver traveled her spine at that. It was the thought that this child might be only her first of many that brought a gasp to her lips. Or maybe it was the idea of Will and Hannibal competing and the determination that would glint in their eyes as they fought to take hold of her body deep in her core and down to her womb. The way she ached to be touched and felt desire pool between her legs might have suggested the latter. She was sure Hannibal would say it was evolutionary if she voiced it: two prime specimens competing to care for her would be more pleasing than just one. To have both of them would ensure that she and her children would never come to harm.  
  
She leaned into his touch as she asked, “What if he tries to separate us?”  
  
“I would not allow it,” he replied as he bent over her to place a kiss at their hands crossed affectionately and protectively over her belly.  
  
Hannibal assured her that the basement was soundproof. He told her that way she could play music or watch TV if she wanted to and not worry about anyone coming home to the suspicious sound of a sitcom coming from the basement. Abigail watched TV for a while to pass the time. She watched whatever shows and movies she could find with pregnancy in them. She relived the surreal all over again with every doctor’s office scene and watched for any other similarity she could find to still feel connected to the normal – even if it was buried in so much that reminded her that her circumstances were anything but. Time was measured in cycles of daytime and nighttime programming and the curve of her belly.  
  
There was a day when Hannibal had served her some sort of breakfast buns with sausage and honey – and seemed pleased with himself for it – and she noticed that her belly had rounded a bit further. It was still just a modest little thing but it was _there_ and definitely a _baby_ rather than anything else. Her world seemed to tip over on its axis when she noticed and she had to sit down so as not to lose her breakfast. She’d forced a hand against her stomach and felt along the surface until it was no longer a shock.  
  
She decided to spend that day reading, something calm. The TV sat ignored – too loud and the ads even louder. Watching the characters interacting on the screen felt like a mockery. The want for care and attention started to scrape too roughly at the back of her mind and she started to wonder when Hannibal would come home, but she only kept reading. The silence buzzed at her ears but wouldn’t be quieted by anything simple. The type of interaction she was longing for wouldn’t be easily found anywhere else.  
  
This was how she managed to hear it: the sound of a drip where it shouldn’t be. In the silence, she heard it drop and fall. She knew every whir and drip in that basement and knew when one was new. She rose from her chair and walked towards it. When she held out her hand, red wine fell and pooled in her palm. That was strange.  
  
The light was turned off on instinct. As she fell into the deep dark, her heart pounded and she held a hand over her mouth so as to not breathe so awfully _loud_. As she heard the hatch door open, she tried to tell herself it was only Hannibal and that it was possible he could be clumsy too. The pound in her heart refused to believe the lies. Her heart sank in her chest and her blood felt drained all over again as the beam of a flashlight swung and got caught amongst the plastic hanging from the ceiling – _not Hannibal_. Tears rose behind her eyes and was frozen, smothering her breath in her hand. Any minute the flashlight would land on her, like a damning spotlight on a guard tower. Abigail might be in the prison or running away from it.  
  
The woman wielding the flashlight looked familiar but Abigail didn’t remember who she was or what her name was. Abigail thought she worked with Will, with the _FBI_. The woman took one look at Abigail and whispered, _“Oh my god.”_  
  
Abigail held back a sniffle, but her tears fell and her arms shook as she moved her hands away from her mouth to her belly and cupped them together over the highest point. She could hardly imagine what the woman might see when she looked at her: a pregnant girl crying in the dark in a basement. She didn’t have to imagine the pity and horror in the woman’s eyes and Abigail hated having to see it.  
  
“Did he do this to you?” the woman asked, breathless as she lowered her gun.  
  
“Yes,” Abigail had answered and felt breathless too. She could hardly breathe in with how her belly seemed to fill too much space. She spread her fingers wider so she might block more of it from Beverly’s view and she whispered, “He’ll come home soon.”  
  
“ _Crazy bastard_ ,” the woman swore. “Let’s get out of this place.”  
  
Abigail felt her legs tremble. She wanted so badly to leave but didn’t want to go. The monotony of the basement was one thing. The possibility of what would happen if she left was _too much_. She just wanted her baby and Will and Hannibal’s plan. Hannibal told her she could have it all and she _wanted it_. She was sure it would feel so much better than all the pity. It was her danger to love.   
  
The woman flicked the light switch and along with it came a cascade of light falling backward. It announced Hannibal’s presence with the gravitas he deserved. As the light revealed him, Abigail noticed the strength of his stance first, then the confidence. Abigail could tell that what the woman saw was a monster. Later, Abigail would be able to recognize that she shouldn’t blame her, but in that moment, she felt something else entirely. It was not quite like anger or rage, not exactly disgust, maybe a bit like possessiveness. She was aware that she was more his than he was hers, but she still had him in some way and couldn’t bear to lose anything else.   
  
Hannibal flickered the lights off. There were gunshots. Each one sounded so loud in the dark that Abigail thought she might be struck in the heart. Her hands flung out into the open air and grabbed hold and a gun clattered to the floor. The woman’s breaths heaved and wheezed and Abigail could feel her pulse in the hold of her hands until it slowed and stopped. When the light turned back on, Hannibal’s hand was on Abigail’s shoulder and the woman was dead on the floor, eyes blank and no longer able to judge. Abigail turned into Hannibal’s arms and soaked his lapel with her tears as she clung to him.  
  
He moved her to the house by the bluffs shortly thereafter, while the cuts up his forearms were still raw. It was a nice house – well-decorated, open, homey. There was a library instead of just a bookcase. The kitchen was its own room. Her bedroom wasn’t a meat locker. Without the whir of a freezer as her most constant companion, she could sometimes hear the sounds of waves crashing against rock. There were windows – although she was instructed not to open the curtains too much – but they were _there_. There was the illusion that the outside wasn’t so far away.  
  
Sat all alone at the top of the bluff the wind sometimes blew so hard against the windows and howled so loudly. Once in a very long while, in the dead of night, she would finally give in and crack open the door out the back. The air would rush in and push the door wider and sweep the latest of Hannibal’s drawings to the floor. And when she dared to step outside in such a storm, the wind would catch her dress in the bluster and wrap it so tightly around her body that she felt every part of herself. Her hair would whip around her face and catch on her lips as the air caught in her throat and threatened to choke her.  
  
She placed a hand to her belly and breathed deep, imagining the stale basement air replaced by nature and destruction. Through it all, she was only glad that she _felt it_. This, she told herself, was what it would feel like after they ran away. She would be alive and free and overwhelmed with all the things that she would be able to _feel_.  
  
What Abigail gained in space and fresh air cost her the company to share it with. As the baby started to kick, she started talking to them, discussing the day with them when she had no one else. She talked about her reading and everything she was learning. She played the piano for the baby and joked with self-deprecation when her fingers fumbled or she reached a part in the sheet music that she simply didn’t understand. She complained to the baby that Hannibal wasn’t there to explain it.  
  
The baby kicked when she talked about Hannibal and kicked even harder when she talked about Will. It never failed to make her smile. The more the baby kicked back when she talked, the more she started to think that having a baby in her belly would spare her having to suffer being truly alone.  
  
Sometimes she thought the baby must be like Hannibal in the way they could sometimes be almost polite. If she asked a certain way that they liked, the baby would stop kicking for a little while and curl in deeper to settle. Then sometimes when going to bed, she thought the baby must be like Will. She remembered how he slept the night they shared the hotel – or _didn’t_ sleep. He was restless and hardly settled. He kicked arms and legs nearly all night long. It wasn’t until she slipped into bed beside him, that he’d curled her into his arms and finally slept. The sun had come up too soon after that.  
  
Hannibal still visited from time to time, with no regularity or routine so as to avoid suspicion. He would simply arrive and leave when he wanted. He fed her as she needed and provided her with fanciful meals eaten while discussing some tale of Will. He asked her about her day too and she told him exactly what she told the baby. Their interests seemed piqued at the same parts. She smiled as she told him about something new that she’d learned and the baby kicked out as Hannibal smiled back in his own way. She missed him when he was gone.  
  
He visited her by surprise one day as she sat in a chair by the fireplace. She felt much too warm to light it and Hannibal would probably object to the smoke – they couldn’t give any sign that the house was _lived in_ – so she sat in front of a cold fire and imagined the ambiance in its place. He’d walked into the room and brought more cold with him, but the touch of his hand to her shoulder was warm.  
  
“Will you play for me?” he’d asked her.  
  
It hadn’t felt like a question and it wasn’t because she had to do what he said but because something about how he said it made saying yes so easy. She tried many times in the dead of night to understand what it was that she felt Hannibal pulling from her. She’d noticed it piece by piece and traced it back in her mind to try to find an end of the thread. The last discovery she’d made was to recognize how precious Hannibal made his vulnerability seem – his _true_ vulnerability, rather than any of the many false ones.  
  
Hannibal asking for simple comfort in her developing piano skills displayed a soft kind of care that a monster like Hannibal would do his best to keep buried six feet under. When she saw it, she wanted more of it. She wanted to feed it and watch it grow. She was attentive to shifts in Hannibal’s mood, felt proud of herself when she figured out what was wrong, and there was a bone-deep satisfaction when she could put all the pieces together and provide the right care.  
  
_He’d been turning her into a mother.  
_  
Her head had gone woozy with the realization. She could hear the sound of knives slicing in the distance but she hardly heard the keys as she continued to play them. Her fingers fumbled in the same spots they always did as her thoughts swam in lazy circles in her skull. The baby kicked against her skin. They always liked when she played piano too. She played and the baby kicked and she wondered what it meant that she wasn’t angry.   
  
He’d touched her shoulder again and guided her to the table. As they ate, she watched him and couldn’t help herself but notice that he looked _sad_. _That_ made her nervous. She knew what to expect from an angry Hannibal, a disappointed one, a dramatic and moody one. She didn’t know what a _genuinely_ _sad_ Hannibal was capable of.  
  
They retreated to the couch together after dinner and laid together even though they barely fit. He was pressed hard and deep against the back of the couch to make room for her in front of him and she curled her arm around and under her belly to hold where the ridge of it protruded past the cushion. Hannibal tipped his head to tuck his nose at the side of her neck. A puff of air from a laugh tickled her skin as a kick struck out against Hannibal’s hand. She squirmed as much as she could as the tingling traveled her skin.  
  
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve been thinking about?” she asked as she pushed back against his chest. She thought of her realization and teased: “You’re supposed to be the grown-up and actually _tell me_.”  
  
If he realized that she’s picked up on his plan, he didn’t show it. Maybe he didn’t care. “Will is having another child,” he announced. The words landed like a smack to her chest.  
  
“What?” she asked as she craned her neck as much as she could to look at him. It had hurt her neck but she’d wanted to see his face.  
  
He’d kissed at her hair over where her ear should be and explained, “With another patient of mine.”  
  
She’d found her only thought was: _How could he?  
  
_In her loneliness waiting for Will, she had been comforting herself with the knowledge that someday it would end. She had spent dark, empty nights filling her time with thoughts of Will and how they would all be together. Meanwhile, Will was filling his time with someone else – someone who Will thought could give him a gift like she could.  
  
“He was tricked, initially,” Hannibal informed her. Hannibal’s voice was low and solemn as he pressed his cheek against her head. She wasn’t sure if Hannibal followed the baby’s kicks or they followed him. The baby shifted in her belly as Hannibal brushed his fingers in smooth sweeps against the outside.  
  
She’d gripped at his arm and tried to twist but with the solid, unforgiving shape of her belly, she hadn’t been nearly nimble enough. Hannibal had to offer the guide of his hands, the strength of his arms, and flexibility of his body, unburdened as it was without the weight of their child. He helped to turn her to face him and his arm wrapped around the deep curve of her back to keep her from falling.  
  
“And now?” she asked as she studied the creases in his expression.  
  
“He is becoming attached,” Hannibal said with a disappointed sigh. His voice rasped and it came out as almost a whisper as he said, “He told me he believes he will be a good father.”  
  
“I know he will be,” she’d agreed. She felt how her belly pressed against Hannibal’s, a baby nestled within that would be lucky to have Will as a father. That _someone else_ out in the world thought the same of their Will. That someone could offer Will the normal life he would never have with them. That baby would be born free of schemes and manipulations. “A perfect new family,” she remarked as she tapped at her belly with her fingertips. “He won’t choose us.”  
  
Hannibal hummed and kissed at the center of her forehead this time. “He aches with how much he misses you.”  
  
“He will replace me,” she insisted as worry and nervousness started to smother her. She felt herself choke on her spit like she had her own blood. She coughed and sputtered as her eyes blinked in anxiously.  
  
“No, my lovely girl, Will would do anything for you, as would I,” he assured her.  
  
“You can’t let him leave us,” she told him and _begged_. She gripped her hands in his shirt and whined, “You _told me_ he would be with us.”  
  
“What would you have me do?”  
  
Abigail had learned to pick up on Hannibal’s emotions over these last months – or he taught her to know them – so she knew Hannibal’s jealousy when she saw it and she knew he was afraid of not being enough. She’d known it, but she truly understood then how he felt. She understood the frenzy, the desperation, and the want to _lash out_.  
  
She and Hannibal could still run away together and be a family but it would always be soured by Will’s absence. Hannibal would always feel compelled to get Will back. As afraid as they both were of not being enough for Will, they also both knew they are not enough for each other without him. She has comforted herself with the knowledge that she was her own insurance and the baby was an added layer of security. Hannibal could more easily discard her if not for how crucial she and the child she carried were to the plan. Her insurance might have become less valuable. Having one was remarkable and priceless, two was common.  
  
Abigail tipped her head low and blinked her eyes up at Hannibal as she said, “If there's anything my father taught me, it would be that it’s better them than me.”  
  
Hannibal touched the scar at her neck and followed the length of it across her throat. “You would have me take the blame for seeming to take away another thing that Will has started to love,” he observed. “I would face Will’s scorn for you.”  
  
“You’re only arguing so you can say I convinced you,” she’d countered as she leaned to kiss softly at his jaw. “You’ve known you would do it since before you walked in the door.”  
  
She could see the corner of a slight smile and the pleased little look in his eye. It was a bright spot in Hannibal’s dark cloud – a bright spot that _sparked_.  
  
“You shall not be replaced,” he told her as his lips hovered near hers. “You could never be.”  
  
Abigail used to be able to curl up in bed, in chairs, in corners. When her parents fought, she could hold her legs to her chest, tuck her face into her knees, and pretend nothing else existed. The last time Hannibal came to fetch her from the house by the bluffs she couldn’t curl up anymore. The great protrusion of her belly kept her from easily pulling her legs up to her chest. She couldn’t make herself any smaller. Even in hiding, she had no way to hide.  
  
The baby wanted more space and had more time to grow but her whole body already felt taken over. She ran her fingers from top to bottom and side to side as the baby shifted outwards against its confines. She swirled her hands along the surface of skin pulled too tight. It felt dry and itchy no matter how often she smeared lotion across it or how through Hannibal was when he did it. Wrapping her arms around her belly then offered comfort in how she could almost imagine she was cradling the baby. She could pretend the strain was a blessing. When she felt the weight was too heavy and her belly too swollen and her back hurt, she reminded herself to be glad she wasn’t alone. She would have this baby to keep her company for years to come, _decades_.  
  
When Hannibal unlocked the front door and entered the house, she’d smiled at him but it wasn’t returned, not even a bit. He walked past her to the bedroom and left her to the well-practiced motion of leveraging her unbalanced weight out of her seat. She groaned softly as she stood up. Her legs felt wobbly and half-asleep, circulation cut off by being squashed between belly and chair. She stumbled slightly as she walked and had to press her hand against the wall in the hallway as she heard the sounds of hangers clinking against each other, drawers opening, and zippers unzipping. By the time she entered the room behind Hannibal, he was placing her folded clothes in a suitcase.  
  
“Is it time?” she asked as she held an arm under her belly to support the weight. Her heart started to pound not only from the effort of a simple walk but also the thrill of maybe _finally_ being able to see Will.  
  
Hannibal pulled another dress out of her closet. He held it up by the hanger next to her to better recall what she looked like when she wore it. She’d been wearing dresses more often recently. They were better able to accommodate her as she grew. The dress Hannibal held up was becoming a bit too tight the last time she wore it. She’d had another growth spurt while he’d been gone for who knew how long.  
  
“Will may not have made progress as we had thought,” he declared as he put the dress back in the closet and pulled out another one to inspect.   
  
“What does that mean?” she asked. Her nervousness only grew as she watched him and her eyes flicked back and forth between him and the suitcase. If Will hadn’t made progress, _why were they packing?_  
  
“Freddie Lounds lives,” he told her plainly.  
  
“What does _that_ mean?” she’d asked as the panic grew stronger.  
  
She remembered how much it meant to Hannibal that Will would share meat and meal with him. He’d brought her a recreation of the meal to share with her when he told her the story. The happiness she’d seen in his eyes that night was gone.  
  
She’d seen Hannibal sad so many times in his own way and to his own degree, but she might never have seen him sadder than he was when he explained, “It means I invite him for a last supper.”  
  
“Will I see him?” she asked.  
  
“If Will agrees,” he answered and, though he was in the same room in front of her, he seemed so far away.  
  
“Am I not supposed to help to convince him?” she asked. Her voice came out trembling and tears threatened to fall.  
  
She almost thought about resisting when Hannibal took her hand in his. She almost thought about trying to curl up even though she couldn’t. But she _missed him_ and she was sick and tired of hiding away. She let Hannibal pull her close. He took her in his arms with her back against his chest and held her in front of the mirror that stood by her closet. Her reflection was nothing new. She’d looked in that mirror every day since Hannibal brought her here. Even so, what she saw that time was different. She saw herself in Hannibal’s arms. She saw herself as he wanted her to be seen.  
  
He grasped a handful of the dress she was wearing. The hold was confident but not too demanding. There was no risk of fabric tearing or yanking. He simply pulled it back and over her head. She stood there in her underwear and she was warm wrapped in his body heat but she felt goosebumps nonetheless for it. Hannibal then discarded her underwear too. Her bra came away around the bends of her elbows and Hannibal guiding her feet to step out of her panties when she couldn’t see them. With all fabric tossed aside, she could only look at herself and Hannibal made sure of it.  
  
Her reflection in the mirror was just as beautiful just as he promised her. As she looked over the huge, roundness at her middle, she knew she’d yielded just as he’d asked. She was stretched tight and swollen just about as much as she could be. The way she looked and felt before seemed long forgotten. She was no longer a slight, skinny little thing. She’d let her womb fill her belly, push into her lungs, and protrude out from her body and she’d done it for him and for Will and for herself and for _them_. She’d done everything Hannibal asked when he told her his plan and when he’d promised it would work.  
  
“You are the last resort,” he whispered. She tipped her head so he could access her neck and press the next words right against her pulse: “The last supper came before the crucifixion.”  
  
“You can’t kill him,” she sighed. “We have to be together.”  
  
“When the moment comes, your role will be crucial,” he told her as his hand drifted across her belly and caught against where her belly button had popped out – _like a turkey_ , she’d thought when she noticed it and it had made her laugh then. She was so close to done. “He shall see you then,” he’d said.  
  


* * *

  
The story she told herself and their unborn child is nearing its conclusion. Every night that she waited and grew was another night that brought her closer to this day and it is finally _here_. Will is actually _here_ and she’d gotten to touch Will for the first time in far too long. She doesn’t want to lose him again. She wants to kiss him again and hold him close and be held and for none of them to ever feel alone.   
  
Hannibal’s hand drifts from her throat to stroke down a long lock of her hair. When she shivers, his arm curls in tighter. As taut as her skin has stretched, the sharp end of his knife seems sharper. Her womb feels too full to have any give. She lays her hand over Hannibal’s against her belly. Strong, capable, there’s nothing that these hands can’t do. Those hands have cut away her ear and then caressed her cheek. They drained her blood and gave her pleasure. They have helped her dispose of bodies and made sure she was alive and well. She has learned what it is like to be held by these hands and know they have the capacity for anything at any given moment.  
  
She has known that the baby kept Hannibal grounded. The baby makes him human in how he can be capable of something so basic and pure and simple as making a baby and make him feel something so common as _wanting_ it. Just as Hannibal used Abigail’s baby as a way to entrap Will, Abigail knows it is possible he has been caught too. But Hannibal’s ties are looser than Will’s or Abigail’s. Given just a little less security and a little more slack, Hannibal might let them go entirely.  
  
Hannibal’s voice is soft and encouraging as he asks, “How would you feel, dear Abigail, if our Will left us now?”  
  
“Gutted,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was kind of surprised by how fun this chapter was to write? I never expected to write Abigail POV but I really enjoyed it! 
> 
> I've finished writing the next bit and I just have to edit it. I'm on track to post 50k words this month I think???
> 
> Anyway, comment to let me know what you thought!


	4. Chapter 4

“No,” Will begs. “Please don’t.”  
  
Hannibal hasn’t twitched so much as a fingertip, but Will still feels a stabbing pain in his stomach – _gutted_. The look in Abigail’s eyes is so _desperate_. He remembers what she’d looked like the day her father gave her the scar across her throat. It was the day Will killed her father in his kitchen and now here they are all back here in a kitchen together. Will has a gun. Abigail is held far too near the edge of a knife. There is so much the same and yet nothing _feels_ it.   
  
Hannibal is bloodied and vicious. It’s much of Hannibal – the _true_ Hannibal – as Will has managed to see. This is still something new. It’s something discussed and understood but by nature of never being seen it never felt fully _real_ until now. He knows Hannibal’s hands on corpses. He has seen it when he closes his eyes and felt it as if it were his own hands. He’s been left to sink into the bloody aftermath but has never been able to actually see the kill. He flexes his hand to fight off the feeling of Hannibal’s blade cradled in his palm.   
  
“Can’t you see how well our Abigail has bloomed and blossomed?” Hannibal asks as he leans his cheek against Abigail’s hair. His voice is barely more than a whisper and it pleases Will down to his bones. “It may not have been your design, but can you not still appreciate your creation?”  
  
Abigail’s eyes are still so big and blue as he looks back at her and she draws him into her depths. She dips her head lower and looks up through her lashes with such wide eyes but she doesn’t tremble or cry. When she drops her eyes away, he does too and looks instead where he knows they both mean for him to. He tries to look past the knife with its glinting silver to admire again at how round and ripe Abigail has grown. His palm no longer flinches away and instead flexes towards a curve that he knows fits there _so well_.  
  
“ _Beautiful_ ,” Will vows.  
  


* * *

  
Will had all of his time in prison to think and to _stew_. Hannibal gave him plenty to mull over. It was enough for a _lifetime_ , particularly if certain people had their way and the length of his lifetime was cut much shorter. As he dug out memories and pieced together his past into a new story, he also considered how its new form would alter his future. When he pushed on his cell door and it swung open, he knew better what to watch out for in the outside world. There would be no more allowing Hannibal to slip into his brain alongside the illness that tried to tear him apart. Will would be better equipped to deal with a brain that was attacking itself.  
  
When he’d knocked on the door to Hannibal’s office, he thought he’d known all of the risks and benefits. As he’d remade his image to match what he could infer of Hannibal’s preferences, he considered both the potential for glory and the potential for disaster. He thought of the lives that might be lost and knew his was among them. He contemplated all that success might include – maybe Hannibal would be captured, maybe Hannibal might die by his hand.  
  
As Hannibal opened the door to the office Will knew so well, he reminded himself of the benefits of his tactics. He could get close while keeping some part of himself distant. _Physical_ distance and closeness were the easiest ones to understand. The literal tangibility of it all made it easier to know what he would be giving and what would be taken. He would know where Hannibal begins and Will ends.  
  
Even as Will felt Hannibal’s attentions like hands trailing along his flank and up his rib cage, he didn’t actually let Hannibal touch him that night. After his hour ended and he drove home, he made sure to remember the difference between Hannibal’s want and Will’s reality. He forced himself to memorize the difference between Hannibal’s arousal and his own even as it meant recognizing that he had _wants_ until he got so hard and aching that he had to jerk himself off in the car before he could go inside.  
  
It was a good thing Will had some practice in restraint.  
  
His anger burned at his veins and pounded at his ears. Every pulse of his heart told him that the man who kneeled in front of him – a _social worker_ meant to heal and care for others – deserved to feel the violence that called out to Will’s every nerve ending. In the clamor, he kept himself absolutely still. He could feel that a single twitch of his finger would be too much temptation. Even without a trigger to pull, one twitch could be the difference that ended with blood-soaked hands.  
  
A thought clanged through Will’s skull. It was an angry one. It was one that couldn’t understand why Hannibal would stop him. He’d expected Hannibal to encourage him to murder at every opportunity so that the blood might slicken his way into a darker descent. Instead, Will’s hands had been kept cleaner. He felt himself pulled back within and his vision faded as he retreated. But still, he couldn’t stop himself from hearing.  
  
“With all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you,” Hannibal’s voice crept in, intruding just as he described. Will could feel its nimble fingers as he felt Hannibal’s hand curl around the back of his neck. Will could feel Hannibal’s eyes on him as they flickered across his lips, up his cheeks, and to his eyes.  
  
“I can feed the caterpillar. I can whisper through the chrysalis. But what hatches follows its own nature and is beyond me,” Hannibal had said with a laugh. Will couldn’t remember when he last heard Hannibal laugh.  
  
That thought that clanged hit a little harder. Will’s flinch was a blink as he recognized that Hannibal was _proud_. Will hadn’t known that was what was missing. He’d thought Hannibal would be happy with him for shooting and to be stopped felt _empty_. Will’s eyes regained their focus and saw only Hannibal. Held so closely and so directly, he had no choice to see what Hannibal’s true, authentic affection would be and _feel_ that this was no intervention. He felt it the way he felt that there had been no thought or premeditation to what he himself had just about done. It seemed almost fitting that Hannibal’s most sought after and repressed instinct should be kindness and that Will’s should be violence.  
  
He moved with his neck first to close the last remaining space between them. He didn’t have to go far to press their lips together. Although his teeth clenched and threatened to snap, Hannibal’s hold still held firm. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t perfect – Will’s lips too stiff and Hannibal’s curled too much with a smile. Will could tell Hannibal’s satisfaction only grew and Will wanted to swallow it down. Will kissed him harder and caught Hannibal’s bottom lip between his teeth but still Hannibal only seemed pleased.  
  
Will would have done more if not for the sniveling and trembling at his feet.  
  
Will brought it up during their next _conversation._ He sat back the chair that had become _his_ , held a wine glass between his fingers, and swirled it over and over, farther and farther. Hannibal didn’t even flinch when it nearly spilled. He didn’t even seem like he wanted to. There was no tension in his neck to betray annoyance as the red wine came closer to the rim than it had ever before.   
  
“A physical relationship with a client,” Will observed with the raise of his brow. He licked his own lips and remembered how they’d kissed. He also licked at his teeth for good measure. “Have you shed the illusion of ethics?”  
  
“Hardly seems like an illusion worthwhile to maintain when in present company,” Hannibal countered and Will felt Hannibal’s smirk returning as much as he saw it and felt his own smirk try to follow suit. “The illusion might only matter if you were planning to make it known.”  
  
Will curled his lips into a frown instead. “Are you still _fucking_ Alana?”  
  
“Yes,” Hannibal had confirmed so simply that it made Will’s teeth ache.  
  
“A manipulation,” Will observed coolly.  
  
“That assumption could just as easily qualify as a projection,” Hannibal challenged him. “As I recall, you kissed Alana as a source of distraction once.”  
  
Will nodded. It was a forced recognition. He’d wanted to say that he’d simply done that to protect himself from being considered crazy or protect her from the burden of his madness, but he’d known that Hannibal could spin either of those things so easily that it would be insulting to present it as a challenge. “Have you already envisioned how the relationship should end?” he asked instead.  
  
“Should it end?” Hannibal continued with his needling nonchalance as he leaned his elbow on the arm of the chair and perched his chin gracefully atop his curled fingers. “I was actually hoping it wouldn’t have to. At least not in an ugly sort of way.”  
  
“That’s kind of you,” Will replied, nearly snapping his teeth with each word. He tipped his wine further with the next swirl and watched just a singular drop run down the edge. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the committing type.”  
  
Hannibal’s lips twitched as his finger did in front of his mouth. “Perhaps under special circumstances,” Hannibal suggested. “Does that concern you?”  
  
Will wet his teeth with wine to soothe them. “I think it does.”  
  
Through all the confusion and tits for tats the only thing that stood firm and true had been the ache of losing Abigail. All the violence, death, and near-death left but one thing unaccounted for, unforgotten, and unforgiven. As much as he hated to admit it, he could love Hannibal. It was his love for Abigail that saved him and kept him from _committing_. Freddie would make sure he never forgot even if he wanted to. Margot did too, in her own way.  
  
His fingers seemed so rough and harsh as he touched the line of scar tissue that sat raised and prominent against Margo’s skin. He brushed her long hair over her shoulder and when she looked back at him the look in her eyes was at once soft and severe. Her eyes were such a pretty, captivating blue that looking elsewhere would seem rude. It comforted him to be held in this kind of attention in the way that one might feel comforted when applying a bandage across a wound. He wouldn’t heal without stitches but something was better than nothing.  
  
Will knew Margot’s heart wasn’t in it. As much as it might have hurt to not be able to get exactly what he needed, Margot’s detachment made it easier that his heart hadn’t been in it either. He didn’t have to feel so guilty that he couldn’t give her everything either. They both had their own reasons for doing what they did and none of those reasons had much of anything to do with each other. It was surface level, which was the same thing he had been telling himself about Hannibal. A part of the manipulation or a simple pleasure, either way, it wasn’t meant to be more than that. Will couldn’t – _shouldn’t_ – give Hannibal everything he wanted and he couldn’t – _shouldn’t –_ accept whatever twisted things Hannibal wanted to give. Sex with Margot reminded him what surface-level really meant and really felt like. She made him confront the lie.  
  
When Will’s thoughts drifted, he wondered if Hannibal and Alana found themselves in something as convoluted and unbalanced as he did with Margo. He wondered if Hannibal felt this detached, if he could feel Will in the back of his skull, and if Hannibal’s bed felt sunken with the weight of a body that wasn’t there. At times, Will could feel Hannibal’s touch more clearly than Margot’s. When he held a fistful of his blankets in his grasp, he hoped that Hannibal might feel it as a grip in the hair at the back of his head.  
  
It seemed almost absurd to find himself having dinner with Hannibal and Alana soon thereafter. The shine in Alana’s eyes and the smirk as she discussed the negotiation of _boundaries_ seemed to suggest that the dinner itself might have almost held some potential. After all, they were all adults who knew how to share. There was no reason for Will to feel like the mistress at dinner with a wife that didn’t know. However, it was impossible to imagine how Will might want to lose himself in Hannibal but have to keep control of himself with Alana. Any attempts to imagine it only ended with a bloodbath.   
  
When Alana left later that evening and Will stayed, it gave him a sense of _rightness_ that he did his best to not dwell on. He sipped once again at his wine at a table that hadn’t been cleared of its dishes from dessert. He could hear the close of the door behind Alana as she was escorted out. He’d heard mumbles of plans for the next day but those didn’t matter to him. Hannibal returned to the dining room, cleared away the dishes, and Will lifted a brow when Hannibal offered him a whiskey for a refill instead.  
  
Will took the drink from him and held eye contact with Hannibal as he drank a swig of it. He winced slightly with the burn and he announced, “I want to fuck you right here. I want to fuck you where you sat so it’s perfectly clear _where we are with each other_.”  
  
Hannibal tapped on the table with his knuckles but otherwise didn’t react. “What is it you hope I will learn from this exercise?”  
  
“Better the devil you know,” Will reminded him.  
  
Hannibal nodded and smirked as he started to peel away his many layers of clothes. Will simply sat and drank at his whiskey as Hannibal slipped the jacket from his shoulders and folded it in half and then a quarter.  
  
Just before Hannibal set the perfectly folded, expensive jacket on the table, Will commanded, “Drop it on the floor.”  
  
Hannibal locked gazes with him but didn’t refuse or flinch as he let the fabric slip from his fingers and fall. The slump of the fabric against the floor was muffled and quiet but Will rolled his neck with how the sound of it made him shiver. He continued to watch as the vest came next, then the tie, then the shirt. Will needed to pace his sips to draw the drink out long enough to last until the clink of Hannibal’s belt and the heavy thump of it sounded out against the wood too.  
  
To see Hannibal without his prim, proper armor was a sight Will relished. He took in every detail to bask in for the moment and to savor later. Hannibal’s chest hair, the definition of his muscle, the slightest softness at his middle, each detail would get its due attention in time. At that moment what felt most important had to do with how Hannibal was already growing hard with Will’s attentions and Will could feel his own cock throb against the confines of his pants.  
  
“The head of the table,” Will reminded him as he nodded towards where Hannibal had been seated for dinner and drank the very last of his whiskey.  
  
“Do you want me to sit?” Hannibal asked.  
  
Will didn’t answer then. He simply set aside his glass and rose from his seat. He approached Hannibal and prowled at his side. He touched his hand to the center of Hannibal’s chest and felt his heart beat under the hair, skin, muscle, and bone. He slid his hand to the back of Hannibal’s neck and yanked their bodies together. The feel of having Hannibal’s naked body against his clothed one made Will groan against his mouth as he delighted in Hannibal’s vulnerability. There had been so many times when Hannibal concealed himself and kept Will vulnerable for his own enjoyment and curiosity. The feel of his clothing against his skin felt like the kind of shield and armor he has sorely lacked.  
  
He pressed his mouth harder and harsher as he made Hannibal messier with a hand disheveling his hair and Hannibal pressed back just as strongly. Hannibal made sure there wasn’t enough space between them for even a breath of air and Will felt Hannibal’s hands tauntingly close to his ass. Hannibal’s cock pressed against his thigh and his own cock strained back against it across the layers of fabric that acted as a barrier. Will ground back against him and the friction made his cock throb with pleasure and with the want for more and the harder he ground against Hannibal, the more he wanted.   
  
Will bit at Hannibal’s lip. As it slipped from between his teeth, he murmured, “Bend over the table.”  
  
He hated to lose the contact as Hannibal moved away and he had to palm at his cock to ease the loss. His moan came out as a panting breath as he rubbed at his cock and watched Hannibal lower himself until his chest, cheek, and palms were flat against the surface of the table. He looked back at Will as much as he could out of the corner of his eye and Will couldn’t help but smirk at him. He admired everything that was presented to him: the flush of Hannibal’s cheek, the mess of his hair, the expanse of his back, and the swell of his ass. So much skin was there for Will to touch and taste and study. He wanted to claw his way into Hannibal and bite at him with the teeth Hannibal tried to sharpen. He wanted to mark Hannibal’s skin so that Alana might see it later.  
  
Will retrieved a bottle of lube from his pocket and he didn’t need to see the upward curve at the edge of Hannibal’s lips to know it was there as he clicked open the lid. “Seems this was premeditated,” Hannibal said, muffled and muted slightly against the table surface.   
  
He slicked his fingers with lube and spread it messily across Hannibal’s hole. When he found that one finger pressed in easily, Will hummed. “Seems so.”  
  
With Hannibal already stretched for one finger, Will easily pushed in a second and his smirk sharpened as Hannibal’s muscles tensed. He groaned when Will pressed, twisted, and spread his fingers as he took his time finding the particular spot he was looking for. Once he found it, he hardly gave it any attention and pulled his fingers out instead. They were slick with lube and tacky at the edge where it had started to dry as he undid his belt and fly. He pushed away his pants and boxers until they felt to pool at his feet, where his shoes were still perfectly laced.  
  
He pressed the head of his cock against Hannibal’s hole and took his time to admire again at the sight. He thought it was maybe just as pretty as when Hannibal had taken him into his mouth. There was no need for self-restraint. Will wasn’t battling his violence back into its cage hidden away deep in his mind. His desire to dig into Hannibal didn’t need to be concealed or shamed away. It was too late for that.  
  
Will pressed his cock in slowly and steadily. He savored the feel of Hannibal’s body accepting him in his intrusion. Hannibal kept his hips still but he rasped a gasping breath as Will pushed deeper. When Will sank in as deep as he could, he laid himself on top of Hannibal to make Hannibal feel his weight pinning him. He licked the salty sweat that beaded at the nape of his neck and set his aching teeth against the skin. He clenched his jaw and dug his teeth in until he could feel the points of his teeth as they threatened to bruise and puncture. Will nearly broke skin when Hannibal clenched his hole around his cock.  
  
He released Hannibal’s neck from between his teeth and licked across the divots and bruises he left behind. He stood up straighter to grab greedily at Hannibal’s hips. He pulled out with just as much care and control as he’d pushed in even as pleasure clawed at his belly and his throat. He only did it so that thrusting in could feel that much rougher. He felt the slap of their skin together and the collision of Hannibal’s body against the unforgiving table and he hoped for another set of bruises for Hannibal to wear and try to explain away.   
  
He kept one hand at Hannibal’s hip and the other dragged shortened nails down the muscles that bunched and coiled as Will thrust. Will chased his desire and his pleasure with each push and pull of his hips. Sweat dampened his hair and his panting breaths turned wet. His muscles tightened and blood pounded in his ears alongside Hannibal’s moans. Will wanted Hannibal louder and messier, soaked to the bone and shaking. He wanted him undone by his touch. For a moment, he considered Hannibal on his back so that he might see Hannibal’s face as he came and Hannibal see _him_ as Will made him come. His desire to make Hannibal dirty his table when he did it won out quickly and easily. The next time Hannibal had Alana to dinner, Will wanted him squirming with the memory. He only hoped he would be there to witness it.   
  
“You know you’re mine, don’t you?” Will demanded as he gave another snap of his hips.  
  
“Yes,” Hannibal rasped back. The sound was cut in two as his body was jolted forward. His arms were braced against the surface of the table to help manage the friction. “ _Yes_ , cunning boy.”  
  
Will thrust in as deep as he could as he came. Pleasure exploded outwards to set his nerves alight. He moaned loud and unrestrained as he left yet another trace of himself on Hannibal – _in Hannibal_ – that he wouldn’t soon forget. It felt right in all the ways it hadn’t with Margot. The touch of Hannibal’s skin made the fantasy a reality. There was no phantom taunting him, only the harsh reality. Though his muscles ached with fatigue and his orgasm rang his frenzy out of his veins, he pulled Hannibal’s hips back just far enough to wrap his hand around Hannibal’s cock. It only took a few strokes of Will’s hand and a few more dirty, possessive whispers in Hannibal’s ear to have him spilling on the table just as Will wanted.  
  
The joint appointment that came later with Will, Margot, and Hannibal all in attendance hardly felt like two clients who shared a psychiatrist. As Margot made her motives clear, Will looked to Hannibal in his seat and knew he was not looking for a friend or a confidant. He thought he might see someone as interwoven into this mess as Will was. Will could hardly trust the relief when Hannibal told him he’d had nothing to do with it, even when later Hannibal was the closest and most casual Will have ever seen him as Hannibal nearly seemed slumped into his seat. And, while Will had been much more hunched over and rumpled in that office before, his posture then was at its most casual too and he felt himself sitting like he belonged there. It was an odd feeling when the air in the room seemed so melancholy.  
  
“I’ve been so preoccupied with the taking a life, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around making one,” Will had said. His lips and tongue stumbled over the words as if it were proof of how strange they seemed. His mind and mouth hardly had practice with it.  
  
“When men become fathers, they undergo biochemical changes that affect the way they think,” Hannibal had told him.  
  
Will blinked with a flickering recollection and recalled, “You said the same thing happens when men become killers.”  
  
“Fathers can be killers,” Hannibal suggested and then seemed to stop to consider. Will thought he might have seen the briefest second of hesitation before Hannibal asked, “What sort of father would you be?”  
  
Will couldn’t help himself but feel warm at the question. He felt lit from within like a nightlight that cast shapes against the wall at it spun. The shapes took form in images that then told a tale in which he finally had a family the likes of which he’d never had before. His lips twitched in a smile as he thought of the love and affection he could give a child, so simple and so much less complicated.  
  
“How quickly we form attachments to something that does not yet exist,” Hannibal observed with some admiration.  
  
Will sighed. “I’m not attached,” he corrected. He could feel how something had started to ache deep within his chest but it could hardly qualify as a twinge then. “I’m only anticipating attachment.”  
  
“We have a deep-seated need to interact with our children,” Hannibal said. “It helps us discover who we are.”  
  
Will looked over at Hannibal curiously. Something about the phrasing pulled at his attention. Something about the _our_ in _our children_ seemed to sound louder in his ears. He’d never considered it before that Hannibal might have children, but suddenly the way he talked made Will question whether he might have overlooked it.  
  
“Have you ever been a father?” he asked and he watched Hannibal closely as he answered.  
  
“I was to my sister. She was not my child, but she was my charge. She taught me so much about myself,” Hannibal told him and there was so much for Will to see as he said it, so many emotions and expressions that arose and disappeared in an instant. “Her name was _Mischa_.”  
  
Will nearly hesitated as he questioned, “Was?”  
  
“She’s dead.”  
  
Will had wondered in that moment how much time must have passed that Hannibal was able to say it so simply and directly and without a single tear. Will figured it would take years of practice saying the words over and over in his head and aloud if his own difficulty was any indication. Will had found that grief was something that he could get accustomed to. It was a pain so constant that he could acclimate to it, but it hurt like hell whenever he remembered it again. Sometimes he could pretend Abigail was back at Port Haven. She was out of sight but still here. It would hurt to remember he couldn’t go visit her and that she would never come home to him.  
  
“Why did you kill Abigail?” he’d asked.  
  
“What happened to Abigail had to happen,” Hannibal told him and he at least had the politeness to seem contrite. “There was no other way.”  
  
“There was,” Will insisted. “But there isn’t now.”  
  
He thought of Abigail – bright, beautiful _Abigail_ – and how he’d held her in his arms one day and she’d vanished the next. He was denied the opportunity to contemplate a goodbye. He was _undeserving_ of a goodbye by nature of being the alleged one who killed her and even when he learned the truth, the time for closure seemed long gone.  
  
“Would you protect this child in the way you couldn’t protect Abigail?” Hannibal asked and, though it stung as Hannibal’s words often seem to, Will could feel some genuineness to the question.  
  
“I still dream about Abigail,” Will confessed, though it hurt him. It pained him to think of the dreams that were born from attempts to cope, which were themselves born from shattered fantasies. “I dream that I’m teaching her how to fish.”  
  
“I’m sorry I took that from you,” Hannibal said. The expression in his eyes and pallor of his skin moved beyond contrite or remorseful. To Will, it felt something like despair and dread. Even after Hannibal looked away, Will could still feel it. Will watched Hannibal swallow down his regret as he said, “Wish I could give it back.”  
  
“So do I,” Will had replied as he felt a tear slip down his cheek. Will brushed away the tear with the back of his fingers so that it might be more slight and subtle. It was old habit and clearly outdated when his present company would undoubtedly notice regardless. The habit came from days when Will’s adversaries were those who scorned emotion as a sign of the weak. For all his faults – _and there were many_ – Hannibal did not hold such asinine illusions.  
  
“Occasionally, I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor. On purpose. I’m not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again,” Hannibal told him. His tone and pace made it seem almost like a story rather than a simple anecdote. It held the wistfulness of a fable with a lesson, though Will didn’t know what it was. Hannibal seemed to shift back to the present and he looked at Will as he said, “Someday perhaps, a cup will come together.”  
  


* * *

  
When Abigail smiles at the praise, Will feels like he’s done something right. The feeling is pure and simple, but Will still almost doesn’t trust it. Nothing that has ever seemed simple has ultimately stayed that way. He doesn’t trust his wants or his desires or even his thoughts. Too much of him feels overrun even as he has tried to keep it contained. There has been one thing all this time that has kept the dam from bursting and there she stands.   
  
“Hannibal made a place for all of us,” she tells him. The way she says _Hannibal_ holds a familiarity he would never have dared to imagine. “The four of us. Together.”  
  
“In that place, we could create our own world,” Hannibal comes as watches Will. “We could see each other as no one else ever will.”  
  
Abigail must see the wash of emotions crashing over him. Will might have reason to feel anger but isn’t sure of it. He doesn’t know what direction it would point in – probably Hannibal, _usually_ Hannibal. Abigail touches at Hannibal’s arm around her and looks back at him. Hannibal’s face is as unreadable as ever but he allows his hold on her to drop away and his knife falls with his hand back into the shadows.  
  
“Why did you come here, Will?” Abigail asks and Will flinches. The only thing he feels from a fever is the chill as it rattles him.  
  
“I wanted answers,” he says and the words feel different, but still true. He wanted answers about Hannibal and about himself. Instead, he only has more questions.  
  
“It wasn’t to get away?” Abigail asks. She lays her hand at the top of her belly so casually that Will knows it’s by habit. “You don’t want to run away with me? With us?”  
  
Will swallows the lump in his throat and licks his lips when they feel too dry. “I didn’t say that.”  
  
“Do you want me to make decisions for you?” she asks and she doesn’t look the same as last time she asked it. His heart clenches, stops, and restarts when he notices she’s more hesitant. Last time she’d known the answer to the question before she asked it. This time no one is sure.  
  
“I don’t know if you can,” he reminds her, desperately, painfully.  
  
There’s nothing medical he can blame for how unsettled he is, but the ability to make informed decisions feels even blurrier now with too many motives and factors and dynamics to consider. He allowed Hannibal close, he knows, but it was supposed to be _his_ lure and _his_ catch. Now there’s blood on the floor that he knows is Jack’s and Alana is laying out in the rain. Will wasn’t supposed to get this caught. He made his decision with his phone call. It seemed almost impossible but he _made it_. He didn’t expect to have to make it again.  
  
“We can make the decision together, as a family should. I am to be a mother and you are to be fathers,” Abigail offers as she looks between him and Hannibal. She looks so beautiful and earnest that it makes Will hurt to look, but he knows how much it would hurt to look away. “What should we do for our family?”  
  
As Will approaches the two of them, his footsteps feel so heavy and so loud. Each one that brings him closer, brings him nearer to a decision. He continues to place one foot in front of the other despite the part of himself that tells him not to. It’s the part of him that pulls his attention to the blood that pools on the floor through the crack under a door. His next step comes and his gaze lands back on Abigail and Hannibal. He sees hope and violence intermingled.   
  
He recalls the question both Jack and Hannibal asked of him – _When the moment comes, will you do what needs to be done?_ – and he remembers his answer:  
  
“ _Oh yes_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read this fic! And an extra thank you to everyone who commented! It really meant a lot to me :)
> 
> Check out the sequel if you'd like!


End file.
